You know that saying "don't look a gift horse in the mouth"? That's kind of how I feel asking if Tidal is the only place to listen to Rihanna's ANTI . It's like, we waited for this album for forever — Rihanna's last album, Unapologetic, came out all the way back in 2012 — and the first words out of my mouth after we finally get it are, "Wait, but is it gonna be on Spotify?" Open up your mouth and let me see your teeth, horse. It's not an impulse I'm proud of, but it's the world we live in now: sometimes ya girl needs to listen to an album through a couple times for free first before she decides whether she wants to spend the money on committing to it forever and ever. And since I am similar to most of the people on the planet in that I don't have Tidal, this question of whether ANTI will be available elsewhere is a pressing one for me. So let's answer it.
The bad news is, yes, Tidal is currently the only streaming site where you can listen to ANTI without purchasing it. But the good news is, that will apparently only be the case for a week, and there are ways to get around purchasing a full subscription just to listen RiRi's long-awaited eighth studio album. The first way is that even visitors to Tidal can listen to 30-second clips of each song, a la iTunes, in case that's all the convincing you need. Or, if you need a bit more, you can get a free 30-day trial to give the service a shot, and see if it's something you need in your life full-time. I think that's the option that Jay Z and part-owner Rihanna would probably prefer, as luring new users is the entire purpose for making the album exclusive to Tidal.
But don't despair; I do still have some more glad tidings for you. Tidal has had exclusive releases like this before, and if you're willing to wait long enough, most of them have always trickled their way down to Spotify. So if you don't absolutely need to be the most knowledgeable person at your office water cooler, you can wait for it to make its way to the free streaming service. But until then, anyone seeking the album on Spotify is gonna get hit with one of these heartbreakers:
Or, you know, you could bite the bullet and spend the $9.99 on a Tidal subscription, or the $11.99 or $13.99 to buy the album on iTunes, for the original and deluxe version of ANTI, respectively. It's a big world out there, with a lot of options, so choose wisely.
