Kanye West’s unexpected tidal wave of downloads
More than half a million unauthorized downloads (and counting) of Kanye West’s new album The Life of Pablo available on any number of pages reveals two things if nothing else: making a record available only through a single outlet and expecting your fans to buy it is an act of gross stupidity and that when pushed, people will resort to an activity widely considered to be on the decline.
The US pop singer has signed a deal with Tidal, the streaming music service created by his pal Jay Z. And just in case anybody hadn’t got the message, West has been tweeting: “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.”
The move has prompted many people to send screen captures of the record on their iTunes, hard drives, smartphones and any number of other services. In the meantime, The Life of Pablo sits atop The Pirate Bay’s most requested downloads.
In short, it’s no longer possible to tell people how and where to get their music.
The simple fact is that Tidal is not very popular, and increasingly looks like nothing so much as the creation of somebody with too much money and time on their hands and who, after getting bored with it has largely forgotten about it. Anybody inclined to give West’s latest outing a listen to is going to have to sign up to Tidal, then buy the record, and then a monthly subscription. Obviously, most people have simply dug out their favorite download site, which is still there despite the best efforts of the Recording Industry Association of America.
Of course it is possible that this is all some incredibly clever marketing tactic (he does like a Twitterstorm), but like most other commentators, I’m inclined to see this as a major gaffe by somebody so out of touch with reality that he believes his product is irresistible to fans, who will sign up to Tidal en masse.
Instead, all West has done is drive those fans back into the arms of whichever P2P site they used to download music before signing up to Spotify or Apple Music, lose all the money those streaming services would have earned him, as well as annoying those who loyally signed up to Tidal only to find all it will allow them to do is listen to it via streaming. The man obviously knows something the rest of us mere mortals are unaware of. But anybody who sees differently is invited to “shut the fuck up and enjoy the greatness.” What it must be to be famous…
Everything was going just fine: unauthorized downloads on the decrease, and a growing awareness that this was always a problem about availability… and then along comes Kanye.
(En español, aquí)
