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Here’s the Pharrell exclusive that Apple Music snagged

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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June 24, 2015, 5:53 PM ET
Courtesy of the artist

Apple scored a big one Wednesday.

Eleven-time Grammy winner Pharrell Williams tweeted a 15-second clip of a new song—Freedom—with the tag line:

Only on Apple Music June 30th.

If you want to hear a longer sample, Apple featured the track in theBeat 1 radio teaser that debuted at WWDC two weeks ago. That video is a available today on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/BNUC6UQ_Qvg

Exclusives are one of the levers with which Apple hopes to pry open the music streaming market. Some have speculated that Jimmy Iovine, who founded Interscope Records and co-founded Beats, may eventually want to build his own label within Apple Music.

UPDATE: Reader @RGGnDFW tweets that a concert video of the whole song is already on YouTube, which gives new meaning to “only on” and “exclusive.”

Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.

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By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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