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Jay Z’s catalog has been pulled from Spotify

Jay Z’s catalog has been pulled from Spotify

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‘At the request of the artist’

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2017 Roc Nation Pre-Grammy Brunch
Photo by Ari Perilstein/Getty Images for Roc Nation

Jay Z’s extensive catalog of solo music was pulled from both Apple Music and Spotify on Friday, and most of it has returned to the former but not the latter this afternoon.

In a statement to The Verge on Friday, Spotify said the removal of some of Jay Z’s catalog was done “at the request of the artist.” The leading streaming service no longer has any of Jay Z’s solo work, with only features and his projects with R. Kelly and Linkin Park remaining on the service.

This is the third time Jay Z’s content has been pulled from the streaming services — after Tidal launched Jay Z removed his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, from all streaming services except for Tidal. Last year, Jay Z’s Blueprint series was removed from streaming services as well. These albums remain unavailable on both Apple Music and Spotify, but the rest of Jay Z’s catalog was restored to Apple Music after less than 72 hours.

It would be pretty late in Tidal’s run to start restricting his entire catalog to the service, as Jay Z could’ve done this when Tidal launched to give it a nice jump start. Surprisingly most of Jay Z’s catalog remained available on Google Play Music over the weekend, with Reasonable Doubt, and the the Blueprint series as the consistent glaring omissions.

At this point, if you want to hear Jay Z’s solo work, it’s probably safest to sign up for Tidal. Though, incidentally, Frank Ocean debuted a new song featuring Jay Z and Tyler, the Creator on his Beats 1 radio show on Apple Music this weekend — that song is available only on Apple Music and not on Tidal. We’ve reached out to Roc Nation and Apple Music for comment.

Update: Updated April 10th, 2:31 PM ET to reflect the fact that most of Jay Z’s catalog has been restored to Apple Music.