Could Kanye West’s Stem Player actually empower artists?

thefader.com:

If Donda represented Kanye West leaving conventional albums in the dust, Donda 2 was him stomping on their remains in his rubber boots.

West shook the music industry when he revealed that Donda 2 would only be released on his Stem Player, a proprietary device capable of isolating different musical elements of songs uploaded into it, available on his website for $200. “Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes,” West wrote in his announcement. “It’s time to free music from this oppressive system.” West’s attachment to populist politics makes it wise to question the sincerity of his altruism, but it would be foolish to question his ambition.

That begs the question: Could the Stem Player end up empowering artists with smaller profiles than Kanye West’s? Tristan Perich is someone who’s interested to see how it plays out.

Perich is a musician, a graduate of Columbia University in music, math, and computer science, and the co-founder, along with Lesley Flanigan, of Physical Editions, a label specializing in releasing music as expressive hardware.