While Apple Music has been busy in recent years creating exclusive documentaries around Ed Sheeran (Songwriter), Christine & The Queens (Chris), Kesha (Rainbow), Beautiful Trauma (P!nk) and even Clive Davis (The Soundtrack Of Our Lives), Amazon is not standing back and letting its rival sponge up all the stories and all the glory.
Kneeling At The Anthem DC debuts exclusively on Prime Video on 21st September and focuses on Jack White’s show at the titular US venue at the end of May. There is also backstage footage as well as clips from other shows during White’s world tour to support his Boarding House Reach album. There is an additional link to the past here as Emmett Malloy, who made The White Stripes’ documentary Under Great White Northern Lights in 2009, also directed this new film.
And it’s not just the video side of things that Amazon has first dibs on as it will have the exclusive on a six-track EP from the show. Naturally there is an Echo connection with users, from 11th September, who asked Alexa to “play the new song by Jack White” being served up ‘Connected By Love’, the first advance track from the EP.
White, of course, was one of the initial celebrity backers of Tidal, but clearly understands that Amazon – generally accepted now as the third-largest of all the streaming services when users of Amazon Prime Music and Amazon Music Unlimited are combined – has the power to put him in front of a far bigger audience than the service in which he has a stake ever could.
There is something of a move here by audio music services to add a video element to their offerings as a means of standing out. This video content also exists as something that, if they help bankroll it, they can trumpet as a genuine exclusive. The tables are turning somewhat here. Acts are no longer (for the most part) giving streaming services an exclusive on their studio albums in exchange for a promotional blitz; but they are more than happy to give them concert and documentary exclusives. Provided, of course, the service in question picks up the bill.
