Kanye West made it very clear that the only home for his new album The Life of Pablo, would be the music streaming platform Tidal. But much to his dismay, some pirates around the web have gotten their hands on Ye’s latest musical project.
BBC reports that the album has been pirated 500,000 times since its release. The Life of Pablo appears twice in The Pirates Bay’s ten most downloaded list, according to the report. In addition to this, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has reportedly filed about 20 requests to take down any website on Google illegally hosting the album or parts of it. A source from Torrent Freak said such actions are just, “costly and increasingly pointless.” He also mentioned he had never seen such activity surrounding an album before, like Kanye’s.
“Generally we don’t track music releases closely, so I’m not calling any records,” he told BBC. “However, I haven’t seen numbers this high before for a music release – not with Adele either.”
It comes as no surprise however, why the album would be distributed under the black market considering how Tidal has subscription fees to its services. Also, remembering the fact that pirated music streaming isn’t something new. Here are some tweets below from Ye’ in reference to Tidal, and his decision not to put his music out on iTunes.
Man thank you so so so much everyone for signing up to Tidal. Tidal is now the number one app in the world!!! pic.twitter.com/O3r9DkX03R
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016
My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016
Also all Good Fridays songs will be on Tidal. Me and Kendrick got 40 songs and me and Young Thug got 40 songs. 40/40 club!!!
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016