Making Stems Stick

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Over the weekend, Kanye West grabbed headlines yet again by announcing new album Donda 2 would be available only through his Stem Player, a $200 contraption that would allow users to break a song down into component parts like vocals and drums.

Ye (now his legal name) declared the effort generated revenues of $2.2 million its first day—the financial equivalent, he explained, of the album being streamed half a billion tim...