Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’ amplifies discord in the music business

The shoo-in for No. 1 on Billboard’s next album chart is Frank Ocean’s “Blonde,” which has charmed critics and enthralled fans who had waited four years since his last record.

But the release of the album last weekend, through an exclusive deal with Apple, also has roiled the industry, bringing to the surface long-simmering tensions that record companies have with streaming music services, and sometimes even with their own artists.

Within days of the album’s release, a series of revelations about Ocean and “Blonde” emerged that portray a business deeply in flux. Ocean, it seemed, was no longer signed to Def Jam, his record company, when “Blonde” was released. He had apparently fulfilled his contractual agreement with the label with the release of a separate “visual album” the day before “Blonde” came out — a move that cut Def Jam and its corporate parent, the giant Universal Music Group, out of the profits for one of the year’s most-anticipated albums.

At the same time, Universal’s management decided to clamp down on the growing practice of releasing new music through exclusive deals with digital outlets like Apple Music and Tidal, a move that reasserted the label’s control over the music its artists produce but also risked alienating top performers who benefit from such promotions.

As the industry has struggled to interpret the fallout from “Blonde,” one thing is clear: In the streaming age, the complex series of relationships the music business relies on to function have become anything but harmonious.

“The unprecedented run of exclusives by digital music services has put a tremendous strain on the relationship between artists and their record companies,” said Larry Miller, an associate professor of music business at New York University’s Steinhardt School. “We are seeing that play out in public now.”

The details of Ocean’s exit from Def Jam are unclear. But the story began to take shape when fans noticed the label’s name was nowhere to be found in the credits for “Blonde.” That album had come out just a day after the release of Ocean’s “Endless,” a 46-minute “visual album,” also an Apple Music exclusive.

Despite its idiosyncratic format, “Endless” — one long streaming film, whose songs (different from those on “Blonde”) were not available separately — fulfilled Ocean’s contractual obligations to Def Jam, enabling him to release “Blonde” through Apple without any involvement from the label, according to three people with knowledge of Ocean’s deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The financial arrangement between Ocean and Apple is not known. Apple, Def Jam and a representative for Ocean’s managers all declined to comment.

It was still not known whether a CD version of “Blonde” would be made widely available, and if so, what company would handle its distribution now that Ocean is no longer on the Def Jam roster. (In another twist to the unusual release of “Blonde” — whose cover art spells it “Blond” — a relatively small number of CDs were included with copies of a printed publication called Boys Don’t Cry that were given away for a limited time in popup stores in New York and three other cities.)

Independence may be particularly attractive to an artist like Ocean, who is revered as an innovator but has been a reclusive and enigmatic figure; he has also complained in the past about Def Jam. But the way “Blonde” was released is viewed as representative of a wider shift in the power dynamics between artists, record labels and technology companies.

Over the last year, major albums by Beyoncé, Drake, Kanye West, Dr. Dre, Rihanna, Future and DJ Khaled were released first through exclusive streaming deals of various kinds. Apple has carved out a particular role in paying for videos by stars like Drake, the Weeknd and Taylor Swift.

But deals like these have also often irritated fans, since they sequester music on a particular subscription-based service — even if only for a limited time. Record labels also often dislike them because they limit sales and frequently lead to piracy.

They also are seen as examples of digital services interfering in the labels’ relationships with artists, a connection that in decades past was absolute but has already been chipped away by declining record sales and the rise of the concert business as a major source of revenue for artists.