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The Stem Player is a music device made jointly between Yeezy Tech and Kano Technology, and released in August 2021.[1][2] The main purpose of the product is the ability to isolate, adjust, and loop stems from songs. Stems from Kanye West's tenth album Donda were made available at launch, but users can upload other tracks that get automatically split.

Ye's eleventh studio album Donda 2 was released exclusively on the device on February 24, 2022, just one day after four tracks from the album were made available.[3][4][5][6]

Releases[]

Music added to Stem Player
Date Song(s)
Launch Donda
? Wash Us In The Blood
February 23, 2022 Broken Road, Pablo, Security, We Did It Kid
February 24, 2022 Donda 2

Controversy[]

The Stem Player release of Donda 2 was controversial upon its launch, mainly because it was the only official way to listen to the album with a steep cost of $200 USD. Therefore, many fans resorted to piracy, with downloads of the album being spread on torrent sites and social media such as Reddit and TikTok.[7] Emulators of the Stem Player were also developed so that the songs from Donda 2 could be downloaded and listened to without the device.

End of collaboration[]

Following the controversial Yeezy Season 9, Alex Klein stated that Kano Computing had dropped Kanye as a business partner[8][9]. In January 2023, Klein further confirmed that Stem had already "ended" its collaboration with Ye.[10] The Donda Stem Player is still listed on the Stem website, but is unbranded and no longer being sold as of 2023. Instead, Kano had decided to collaborate with Ghostface Killah to create a new, "premium"[11] Stem Player that costs $360 USD.

References[]

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