Kanye West's "never for sale" album 'The Life of Pablo' has been illegally downloaded over half a million times (duh)
What is the price of taking your album off sale, only having it available on one of the pricier streaming sites? Unsurprisingly, rampant illegal downloading. Torrent Freak notes that Kanye West‘s The Life of Pablo, which the artist claims “will never be for sale,” has already been downloaded via bit torrent over half a million times in the last 48 hours. (That is just torrents, too, not counting other file-sharing options.) File this under “duh.” Maybe he’s got a super-sweet Tidal percentage (or a cut of the signups). He did help Tidal shoot up to the #1 spot on the iOS App Chart.
Some people paid for a download when it was supposedly available for sale, and as Tech Crunch points out, those people are complaining that they haven’t gotten the album or their money back.
Kanye, as you may remember, claims to be $53 million in personal debt and went on a post-Grammys Twitter tear about it:
my dreams brought me into debt and I’m close to seeing the light of day…
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 16, 2016
Perhaps Adidas will do some big Lebron style deal or …
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 16, 2016
perhaps a fashion group will cover the 53 that I’ve invested over the past 13 years…
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 16, 2016
I don’t have to be cool…
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 16, 2016
He also asked Facebook domo Mark Zuckerberg to reach out, and Funny or Die has since imagined how their text conversation might have played out. Read that here.
Is this all one epic troll move, or a publicity stunt? Or maybe, as reports of real meltdowns may suggest, something more serious?