Kanye West took a huge financial hit due to the poor roll out of his new album The Life of Pablo. His latest work has been pirated and downloaded so many times since its release that the rapper has lost $10million in sales.
This all comes at a time when West has claimed he is $53million in debt.
The New York Post reports that if the 500,000 people who illegally downloaded the album in its frist day had paid the $20 it cost to buy the album West would have personally made $10million.
Kanye revealed on Monday that his album will never go on sale and will only ever be available on Tidal, the digital music service which is subscription based and owned by his friend Jay Z and other music artists.
‘My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal,’ wrote Kanye on Twitter.
‘Please to all my friends fans and music lovers. Sign up to Tidal now.’
Tidal costs $10 to $20 a month, with fans able to get their first month for free.
West may be able to make up that $10million he lost in album sales though, as fellow rapper The Game said he would give him that exact amount as an investment if he came to Dubai to skydive with him on Thursday.
West has yet to respond to this offer.
On Monday, West also expressed his anger towards Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, New York Times over their reception of his new album.
It was a bit surprising considering Pitchfork gave his album a very good 9/10 rating, Rolling Stone has given the work extensive coverage and the Times wrote in their review; ‘Now his rapping is sparser, more pointed, less imagistic and more emotional. And when he truly needs to be heard, he can corral a dream team of collaborators. He’s so fluent that he can use others to speak for him, and be understood clear as day.’
On that same night he also called Puff Daddy ‘the most important cultural figure in my life,’ said that white people ‘don’t understand what it means to be the great grandson of ex slaves’ and also noted that the ‘system is designed for colored people to fail and one of our only voices is music.’
Kanye’s rant came on the same night as the Grammys, where he was nominated for four awards including one for Best Album for his work producing the Weeknd’s Beauty Behind the Madness. He lost in all four of his categories.
