Kanye's new album has been illegally downloaded over 500,000 times

by Jeremy Mersereau

February 17, 2016

0

0

0

0

0

Email this article to a friend

Kanye's Tidal exclusive beat Adele and Rihanna for the #1 spot on Pirate Bay.

Only two words result in more online piracy than “sex tape” and those are “Tidal exclusive.”

Kanye West discovered that after declaring that his new album The Life of Pablo would never be for sale and only be available on the streaming service, before pulling it offline for further dabbling.

Kanye’s erratic moves surrounding the release have predictably angered fans, as many signed up for Tidal expressly for the purpose of purchasing the album, and of course some have turned to other methods of obtaining it: TorrentFreak estimates more than 500,000 people have illegally downloaded The Life of Pablo so far, taking the Pirate Bay’s number-one spot of most-shared music torrents.

As of this writing, the top TLOP torrent file has 8,675 seeders, compared to Rihanna’s paltry 2,635 for ANTI. Though whatever you get currently from a TLOP torrent won’t be the final version of whatever Kanye has in mind, for many, it’s preferable to shelling out for an expensive Tidal subscription… not to mention, the final version of the album should become available for illegal downloading about, oh, 2.4 seconds after it hits Tidal.

“Generally we don’t track music releases closely, so I’m not calling any records,” a representative from TorrentFreak told the BBC. “However, I haven’t seen numbers this high before for a music release – not with Adele either.”

For some reason, the RIAA has been pointlessly diligently working to get the torrents taken down, filing nearly 20 takedown requests to get Google to strike websites hosting the album, but as we all know, that’s more going through the motions at this point than likely to result in any meaningful change in the album’s online availability.

Until Mark Zuckerberg actually takes Kanye up on his request for funding, nobody should be holding their breath waiting for The Life of Pablo, or any other high-profile music release, to only be available legally. Hopefully this cements the idea of an album as exclusive to one tech company as a bad idea in the minds of artists.

As for me, I’m going back to studying up for my What.CD interview exam. Anybody know what the hell an “Ogg Vorbis” is?

Tags: TechMusic, News, Kanye West, the life of pablo, tidal

0

0

0

0

0

Email this article to a friend