I Spoke to the Co-Founder of Ye's Stem Player About the Donda 2 Rollout & More
The latest sales figs and more, straight from Alex Klein's phone.
Ye performing Donda 2 in Miami on February 22.
3 billion. With a b. That’s how many streams it would have required for the artist formerly known as Kanye West to generate the revenue pulled in during the last week of sales of his new Stem Player.
In the week leading up to and immediately following the Donda 2 listening party in Miami on February 22, Stem Player moved over 60,000 units of its namesake—and only—product. (At the time of my interview with co-founder Alex Klein on Friday February 25, the exact number was 60,878.)
Those are relatively modest figures if you think about it in terms of album sales, but it’s hard to compare the barrier to entry of $200 physical devices to ethereal, fleeting digital music. It’s more impressive still if you’ve seen some of the public outcry about the Stem Player’s price point and functionality—and it’s certainly not the flop some were hoping for, however cynically. (Many posited that if the device failed to sell, Ye would be forced to upload it to Spotify and Apple Music, which as of now he has shown no signs of doing. In fact, in spite of not having an album on the platform, West was the most steamed artist on Spotify on February 25.)
In my latest conversation with Klein (our original chat is on GQ here), he states that he views this past week as not only a success, but just the beginning for the device he and Ye have set up with hopes of changing the entire music industry. Check it out below.
To order a Stem Player for yourself, visit their site here.
Me: How many Stem players have you guys sold? I know Ye initially said there was like 60,000 or something and you were making 3,000 a week. So I just wanted to check in on that.
Alex: The sales keep going. We're at 60,878 units sold. That's massive. I mean, we've been selling at an average clip of... Let me go pull up that stat. Yeah, almost a million... $812,618 a day on average.
And it's very stable as well. It's not like spiking as much as some products do.
That’s about 12 million dollars. I'll do the math later, but that seems like an impossible figure to achieve via a streaming service alone. [note: Last October, the original Donda surpassed 1 billion streams.]
Alex: Total sales since launch are over 13.3 million dollars. Sorry, 13.29 million dollars to be exact. Even beyond the financial story, the level of engagement is incredible, for example, the number of people who are writing in reviews. It's nice. It's really nice. I’m going to send you some of the reviews. [note: Alex would go on to send 66 screen shots of positive reviews via text, which is amazing.]
How has the non-quantifiable response been in your opinion so far? In terms of any feedback that you guys have gotten for how people are using it, interacting with the product, etc...
I mean, everyone who has the product loves it. It's really incredible. Interestingly [Twitter founder] Jack Dorsey suggested during Donda 1, like put it out, let people see the creative process and changes.
Just to confirm, that's the plan? Right now, 16 songs have been released. And there was, I think when you log onto the site, something like “Miami Version V2.22.” So will there be just constant new releases updated?
Yes. Some are saying the album is alive and growing. As a Kanye fan, who loves his demos, I fuck with this. It's like he is doing the leaks himself while still working on them and finishing them. I wish more artists did this kind of thing. This is Donda rollout 2.0, and the Stem Player is a great case for a living album release contract. It’s like a little celebration every few days. I like it instead of getting it all at once and waiting…it's nice pacing ourselves.
Has there been anything that you've learned from people's response so far as far as things you want to improve upon next time? Like have you said, "Oh yeah. When we update this product for V2 of it, like, here's something that we want to refine?”
I’m always learning. Sometimes it's difficult to find time to even stop and reflect because you're just moving forward and responding to what occurs and using what occurs to inform what you know, and then using what you know to do something. I think that the live stream was a really fascinating element to this whole story that wasn't really part of the original rollout plan, but was an incredible push from Ye.
We streamed the concert on stemplayer.com and the way the stream worked is that there were multiple cameras and you could like customize your stream. You could like go back and forth between different cameras on stemplayer.com, which was like really, really cool and really different.
How did that live stream come about? How does it ladder up to the bigger mission of the Stem Player?
We were redesigning the streaming site right up until like two minutes before the concert. I was on the phone with Ye as we were driving to the concert and he was like, "Oh, move it here, move it here. How about this? How about that? Like, maybe it should be like this." So we're just always learning and iterating. When it comes to the Stem Player and the Stem Player platform, I think it's cool that we're holding the line and we're keeping focused on having as many people as possible in this initial community experience Donda 2 in this innovative open-source way.
What about the people who say they’re just going to wait for new songs to get uploaded and then pirate them?
This format inherently fights back against piracy because it's only on Stem Player and stemplayer.com that can you get the latest versions of the songs. The album is always changing and is never frozen in amber. Only by being a Stem Player owner and member will you be assured that you're getting the true vision and the latest versions. The other ones on any leak sites are always going to be either out of date or out of format.
Why did Ye ultimately decided to pull the trigger on releasing the songs, many of which are clearly not finished?
After the concert, Ye said, "Hey, let's put all those songs on the Stem Player." And so boom, they were on there. And then the people at home or wherever they were, in their cars, you know, outside, were having the same experience in this interactive customizable way. I think that a lot of people who maybe are not fans of Kanye are trying to spin it to say that this is purely a financial play for him. And I just don't think that's the case.
Why not?
There's a shared vision here between myself, Kano and Ye. Ye had this incredible insight and artists around the world are responding to the fact that it helps them take back control of their business and their media. It's weird and unfair that every artist is depicted in exactly the same way on Spotify. The initial conversation we were having was around cents per stream. But now I think the conversation is turning to look, feel, user experience. Like why is it that UI designers and engineers at Spotify get to control how music is presented to you? Like shouldn't the artist and the creator have a bigger role and maybe even a determining role in that presentation? And certainly in this case, with this collaboration, that has been the case. I think it's cool to see that people are starting to discover that after the initial wow factor of, you know, the break from Apple and the incredible sales figures.
Is Ye open to feedback in terms of the actual music itself and taking that feedback from the community and putting it into the music itself? Or is it more just about the tech side of it?
I can probably just speak to my experience, as a member of the community, which is that Ye is always open to feedback and open to ideas. You know, even on music. And sometimes from unexpected quarters. I'm a perfect example of this. I'm a person who's been building a tech company and ended up writing lyrics on an album and then, thank God, was invited and allowed to participate in lyric sessions on this project, which meant the world to me. So I think it's safe to say that the community is in a better position than ever with the Stem Player to be a part of the process of making the music.
Would it be safe to say that Donda 2 is more akin to what you might see with an app or with a website or with a video game?
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think those are good analogies. I think that is the direction of travel.
What's the overall response been from other artists in the community? What has the response been like from that community and people reaching out to you about getting involved and using it for their own work? What you guys want to do on your end to engage that community and bring them into your ecosystem?
The response has been incredible. I mean, Dave Chappelle wants some, and that's a huge. Drake wanted one, like everyone's... This is like the beginning of a movement. People are thinking like, "This could be how I released my next album, my next single. This is how I could reach my fans in a whole new way." I mean, people should listen to the artists rather than the media, because ultimately they make the art. Actually, the media's been pretty positive as well to be fair. In general, I feel very blessed and lucky and fortunate.
Why do you think the response has been so positive?
I think the hard work that we've put in is appreciated by artists because we're not coming in saying like, "Here's a technology solution that's going to completely control and change your work." It's more like we are technological facilitators. We are Stem Players, almost the name of the product. Like what's an iPod? An iPod is a thing that you have where your music is. Well, this is a Stem Player. This is like, give us your stems and we'll play them, you know? And it's like, it's a lot more of a facilitating, empowering approach that we've taken.