Kanye West album illegally downloaded 500,000 times already

By Tony Field

Kanye West's The Life of Pablo cover art

Kanye West's decision to release his new album exclusively on streaming site Tidal appears to be backfiring.

Website TorrentFreak reports that within one day The Life of Pablo was illegally downloaded 500,000 times via BitTorrent.

That was after West released the album exclusively on his friend Jay Z's streaming site.

Initially, West planned to give the exclusive to Tidal for one week. But now it looks like the exclusive is permanent.

West announced on Twitter:

So for now that means the only legal way to listen to the album is to sign up as a subscriber to Tidal.

The streaming site charges a monthly subscription fee, although offers a 30-day free trial period before the credit card payments begin.

It offers "lossless", higher quality streams than its rivals. But its subscription rates are higher than rival services.

Jay Z and Tidal’s other investors will be hoping that once fans sign up to listen to The Life of Pablo they will opt to stay with the service.

Tidal's exclusive deal saw its app leap to number one on the Apple App Store. It also reached the top 30 in the App Store's top grossing section.

Tidal was bought last year by Jay Z and 16 other musicians from a Swedish company. It was re-launched with much fanfare, but has since struggled.

Jay Z said last October that Tidal had one million paying subscribers.

Apple says it has 11 million paying subscribers, while Spotify says it has around 20 million paying subscribers and another 75 million who listen for free (funded by ads in between the songs).

Tidal has also had to cope with technical glitches and management changes. Its other big problem has been that despite its high profile backers, many listeners simply have not heard of it or have not been motivated enough to try it out.

That is something that Jay Z is hoping to change by offering a series of exclusive releases.

Last month Rhianna released her latest album ANTI on Tidal and since then Beyonce has delivered Formation.

Jay Z did something similar last year. Prince, Nicki Minaj, Little Wayne and Calvin Harris are others who have released songs or videos exclusively on Tidal.

But Tidal is not the only site offering exclusives - Apple recently released an exclusive Taylor Swift concert on its streaming service.

Jay Z knows that, which is why Tidal is also venturing into original TV shows like web series Money & Violence and comedy show No Small Talk.

Apple's big advantage over its rivals is that its streaming service is just part of a much larger business. But streaming sites like Tidal, Spotify, Pandora and SoundCloud need to survive on their own merits.

There is talk that Spotify is looking for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional investment.

There are also rumours that Jay Z would like to sell Tidal, so he will be thrilled with the helping hand he's been given by his pal Kanye.

Of course friendship goes both ways.

West also tweeted: "Tidal is also funding a lot of my scripted content ideas. It's a new day people. More Ultra Light Dreams to be realised."

That is just as well, for West who also tweeted that he is US$53 million in debt and would like to talk to tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg about giving him one billion dollars to fund his future projects.

Newshub.