Jay Z's music suddenly returns to Spotify after 2 years of not being available

Ben Gilbert

Dec 4, 2019, 20:41 IST

Jay Z's music suddenly returns to Spotify after 2 years of not being available

Jose Carlos Fajardo/MediaNews Group/East Bay Times via Getty Images

Shawn "Jay Z" Carter and Beyonce Knowles-Carter at the 2019 NBA playoffs.

Shawn "Jay Z" Carter's music has finally returned to Spotify after a two-year hiatus.
Carter, who owns competing music streaming service Tidal, removed the vast majority of his discography from Spotify back in 2017.
But when Carter and his wife, Beyonce Knowles-Carter, released a joint album in 2018, it showed up on Spotify as well as other services - an indication that the freeze-out of Carter's music on Spotify had begun thawing.
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After a two-year hiatus, Shawn "Jay Z" Carter's music is back on Spotify - and it's just in time for his fiftieth birthday.

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As the clock struck midnight on the east coast of the US, Spotify announced that Jay's massive discography was back on the massive music streaming service. That starts with his first album, 1996's classic "Reasonable Doubt," and goes all the way through 2017's "4:44."

Spotify announced as much with a birthday message directed at Carter:

Among several other nicknames by which he's known, one of Carter's oldest is "Hov" or "Hova" - a shortening of "Jehova," a Hebrew word for God.

Longtime Spotify users may remember a time in the not-so-distant past when Carter's music was available on the music streaming service. It was only removed back in 2017, despite the fact that Carter's catalog remained on the other big Tidal competitor: Apple Music.

It's unclear what has changed since 2017 to make way for Carter's return to Spotify, but it likely has something to do with Tidal's inability to draw users away from Spotify and Apple Music. Tidal has struggled to compete with the two titans of music streaming, and the move to put Carter's music back on Spotify is the latest sign that the competition remains challenging.