'Blonde' was released Saturday on Ocean's own label, a day after the artist fulfilled his contractual obligations with Universal Music Group. But the success of ' Blonde' may have marked the beginning of the end of exclusives like it.

One-off exclusives are streaming music services' preferred weapon as they battle for supremacy, because the music industry has largely insisted all services offer the same overall catalog for the same general price. Cole, rather than listening to Ocean's Pandora channel itself.Ĭonfusing complications like these are one of the reasons Pandora is pushing to launch its own on-demand-style service this year, along the lines of Apple Music. That means, counterintuitively, that a surer way to hear Ocean's songs may be to create a station based on musicians similar to him, like Drake or J. One possible trick: In the past, Pandora tended to suppress songs by the artist that the channel is based on. In the next 10 tracks, none were off 'Blonde.' In the first 10 songs I heard on his channel, three were off 'Blonde,' two were by Drake, and the rest were by a potpourri of artists like J. The album is featured on the artist's Pandora channel.īut Pandora's licensing rules mean you can't listen to all of 'Blonde' in the order you prefer: Playing his station should kick off with one of his tracks, but after that listeners hear similar songs by different artists before getting back to something by Ocean.

The company said Thursday the songs from Ocean's 17-track 'Blonde' record are available to stream. Pandora has loosened Apple's exclusive hold on streaming Frank Ocean's new hit album, but you'll need to be patient to hear it all.

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