If you're a close follower of Beyoncé's recent career, you might have noticed that a difference between her latest project, the concert documentary Homecoming, and previous specials like 2013's Life Is But a Dream, 2014's On the Run (a concert special with husband Jay-Z), and 2016's Lemonade: It premiered on Netflix rather than on HBO. According to an anonymous source cited in a recent Vulture story, the reason for that switch came down to simple mathematics, as Netflix was willing to put up the cash to outbid HBO to get into the Beyoncé business – a total of $60 million for three projects, including Homecoming as the first of the three.
That means that essentially, Beyoncé made a cool $20 million to release Homecoming, an ambitious documentary of her celebrated 2018 Coachella performance, as a Netflix exclusive. For a little bit of perspective, that's reported to be roughly the same amount the streaming giant paid out to get Bruce Springsteen's Springsteen on Broadway, which came out last year. And the film represents far more than just a musical performance by the singer, as she's also credited as executive producer, writer, and director.
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Like Lemonade, Homecoming has an associated album in release too, the release of which doesn't seem to have been affected by her Netflix deal at all. The surprise release of the Homecoming album also seems to have been timed to coincide with the recent release of the album version of Lemonade to all of the major streaming platforms, where before it had been a Tidal exclusive since its original release in 2016 – and the expectation would be that whatever her next two projects for Netflix end up being, they will likely include companion album releases of some kind as well. All in all, it's a good time to be a Beyoncé fan, just so long as you have a Netflix subscription too.
