When Kanye West’s the Life of Pablo was released in February the rapper made it clear that if you wanted to hear it, you would have to go through Jay Z’s streaming service Tidal. In fact, he said it would never be available any other way-and never come as physical CD. Since then, he’s softened. Pablo is now available on Spotify, Google Play and Apple Music too. It’s no great surprise, given Kanye enjoy changing his mind.
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
Now one fan-Justin Baker-Rhett of San Francisco-is really, really pissed about it. According to the Guardian, he filed a class action lawsuit on Monday claiming he was “duped” into subscribing to Tidal following Kanye’s Twitter promise of eternal exclusivity.
Tidal are yet to comment on the lawsuit, but it must sting to have a customer so offended by having to use your service they feel it’s a matter for the courts. This only the most recent in a string of sticky PR situations the service has found itself in: they initially struggled to meet expectations and attract subscribers, missed out on exclusive partnerships with artists and accidentally leaked Rihanna’s album.
Lawsuits aside, Kanye seems to have put them back on the path to success. The Life of Pablo was streamed around 400 million times on Tidal before becoming more widely available, giving the platform the subscriber boost it needed. Since the album started widely streaming, it has become the first record to take the number one position on the Billboard 200 chart through streaming and downloads alone.
So while Justin Baker-Rhett is undoubtedly disappointed in Yeezy, Kanye can take comfort in the millions of fans who are still backing him.
Credits
Text Hannah Butterworth
Image via @TeamKanyeDaily