February 14, 2016, Kanye west releases his long awaited seventh studio album The Life of Pablo. To almost everyone's surprise “the greatest album of all time”, according to West, wasn't even available for purchase on Itunes. It also wasn't available on Spotify, SoundCloud, and Youtube. Instead Kanye decided to release the album on a subscription-based music streaming service called Tidal. Which currently is offering no free-subscription plans at all.
Mr. West basically stabbed himself in the back financially in promoting Tidal. After two days of being out on Tidal, The Life of Pablo has been torrented (illegally pirated) an estimated 500,000 times. This is directly because people do not like supporting big name businesses especially in music. Kanye West fans do not want to personally invest into the next Vevo or Apple music scheme. Tidal is the only platform the album was officially released on. With there being no option of a free membership, poorer fans are almost forced to go illegally download the album. Even thousands of people who did subscribe to tidal were still unable to download the album.
No matter how much the rapper tweeted about Tidal, promoting its service, people still did not have the need to download it. Raising the question of why he even did it in the first place. This has undoubtedly affected his album promotion, sales, and critical reception overall. If your favorite artist released their new album exclusively on Tidal would you download it then? Is one artist really worth supporting an entire company?
Works Cited
Kleinman, Zoe. "Kanye West Album 'pirated 500,000 Times' Already - BBC News." BBC News.
N.p., 16 Feb. 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.
Coscarelli, Joe. "Kanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ Is a Hit, but It’s Not for sale.”
New York Times. N.p., 18 Feb. 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.
Mr. West basically stabbed himself in the back financially in promoting Tidal. After two days of being out on Tidal, The Life of Pablo has been torrented (illegally pirated) an estimated 500,000 times. This is directly because people do not like supporting big name businesses especially in music. Kanye West fans do not want to personally invest into the next Vevo or Apple music scheme. Tidal is the only platform the album was officially released on. With there being no option of a free membership, poorer fans are almost forced to go illegally download the album. Even thousands of people who did subscribe to tidal were still unable to download the album.
No matter how much the rapper tweeted about Tidal, promoting its service, people still did not have the need to download it. Raising the question of why he even did it in the first place. This has undoubtedly affected his album promotion, sales, and critical reception overall. If your favorite artist released their new album exclusively on Tidal would you download it then? Is one artist really worth supporting an entire company?
Works Cited
Kleinman, Zoe. "Kanye West Album 'pirated 500,000 Times' Already - BBC News." BBC News.
N.p., 16 Feb. 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.
Coscarelli, Joe. "Kanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ Is a Hit, but It’s Not for sale.”
New York Times. N.p., 18 Feb. 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.