Apple Music has snagged a worldwide streaming exclusive of one of the most anticipated debut R&B records this year.
Little is known about DVSN, other than the fact they are a Canadian R&B duo hailing from Toronto, believed to be comprised of singer Daniel Daley and producer Nineteen85.
We can also be certain, however, as to how their exclusive on Apple Music came to be: DVSN are signed to Drake’s OVO Sound label.
Nineteen85 was the producer behind recent Drake hit, Hotline Bling (complete with its Apple Music-funded video).
Drake has been a key advocate of Apple Music since its announcement, even appearing on stage at the service’s WWDC launch last summer in San Francisco.
Since then, he’s launched an OVO Sound radio show on Apple‘s Beats 1 station, as well as releasing a collaboration mixtape with Future, What A Time To Be Alive, as a windowed Apple Music / iTunes exclusive in September last year.
DVSN’s 10-track debut, SEPT 5TH, was released on iTunes and Apple Music at midnight ET on Saturday (March 26), a week before it was expected to land on digital services.
DVSN announced the surprise album release on the OVO Sound radio show on Beats 1, shortly before its arrival.
Thanks largely to Drake and OVO Sound’s patronage, DVSN’s album is hotly anticipated in R&B circles, earning early comparisons to Frank Ocean and D’Angelo.
SEPT 5th is the latest record to appear in full on Apple Music in its opening week but not on Spotify – where fans can currently only play four of the album’s 10 tracks.
(Apple Music in the UK currently only offers the same four tracks from SEPT 5th as Spotify: With Me, Too Deep, Hallucinations and The Line. It is still marked ‘Pre-Release’.)
Some fans are clearly not delighted about the DVSN record’s non-arrival on Spotify…
