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Macklemore & Ryan Lewis will celebrate the release of their new album by performing it for the whole world to see, courtesy of Amazon.
At an intimate 500-person venue in Seattle, the rapper/producer duo will perform their new body of work, “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made,” on Friday, February 26, the day that the album will be officially released. The concert will be live-streamed for free on Amazon’s website at 9 p.m. PT. The album will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Music that day, as well as via other services like Apple Music and Spotify.
Hosting exclusive events and live-streaming them could be a growing trend for streaming music services; any little thing that helps one service differentiate itself from another is critical in this time of overabundant choices. Macklemore, however, isn’t an exclusive artist to Amazon; this is just one Seattle-bred business showing love to another, and vice versa.
Seattle loves it some Macklemore.
Joshua Weisberg/Icon SMI
Amazon’s no stranger to streaming music, though this is the company’s first live-streaming concert. This is a rather new thing, not just for Amazon, but for the whole music-streaming scene.
Apple Music did this with a Taylor Swift concert, and most recently Tidal live-streamed the debut of Kanye West’s new album, which was held at his avant-garde fashion show in Madison Square Garden in New York. In addition to those who attended the show and others who paid money to see the event in theaters worldwide (I was one of them), over 20 million people streamed West’s extravaganza. Or at least they tried to. Tidal suffered from technical issues during the live stream, resulting in many upset viewers.
Macklemore is not without controversy, though. His latest song “White Privilege II” caused a commotion due to its racially charged lyrical content. There’s some buzz around his new material and this will work to his and Amazon’s advantage if people tune in to see what the big deal is about.
We’ll have to wait until Friday to see if Amazon can throw an album-debuting live stream better than Tidal. Luckily for the company, the bar is pretty low.
