#Kanye west meltdown at music awards download#

“The Life of Pablo” is leading the popular Pirate Bay’s list of most shared music with nearly 10,000 people actively sharing the album as of this story’s writing.Īnd yet, somehow, that’s just scratching the surface of Kanye’s week. More than 500,000 people have downloaded pirated versions of the album since it was released on Tidal, according to. You can only get it on Tidal,” he wrote.ĭespite, and likely because of, its exclusivity to one streaming site, people are still acquiring West’s latest album in great numbers - even if they refused to sign up for Tidal.

He also urged his more than 19 million followers to subscribe to the service and revealed he never intends to release the album to Apple. To its credit, Tidal also offered refunds to those who didn’t want to wait.Īfter the Tidal snafu - the second time the service owned by Jay Z and a number of A-list musicians flubbed an exclusive album release after Rihanna’s disastrous roll-out - West again took to Twitter to announce he decided not to sell the album for one more week. “The final version of the album will be released in the next several days,” the message continued.

#Kanye west meltdown at music awards download#

On Monday, Tidal emailed customers saying, “A partial version of the album is available for streaming … but the download is currently not available. Shortly after making the announcement, West pulled down the commercial version of “The Life of Pablo,” and those who had already shelled out $20 for the 18-track album complained on Twitter that the album had a glitch that excluded the record’s final track and instead repeated the song right before it.

(Noel Vasquez / Getty Images)ĭays later, during his stint as musical guest on “Saturday Night Live,” West announced digital copies of the album were for sale via his personal website and streaming on Tidal. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West talk in their courtside seats before the Lakers take on the Denver Nuggets on May 12, 2012, at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Why have a bombastic album release event if the album isn’t finished? Well, why not? West turned pomp into performance art long ago, and as messy as Thursday’s event appeared to be for those of us who weren’t there, many wanted to be there, judging from the flurry of online conversation offering tips on the best way to stream the event along with the sheer volume of bootleg rips that came available online shortly after the event ended. In fact, as West eventually revealed, “The Life of Pablo” wasn’t even finished.įor the notorious perfectionist, it was both a rare moment of disorganization and yet the most West-like approach to releasing an album.

That last one, obviously, didn’t go over well, particularly with Swift (more on that later).ĭespite people dropping cash to attend Thursday’s event along with the money to secure a download of the album upon its release - to say nothing of the anticipation felt by those who tuned in for the album release party - there would be no actual album to purchase after the event. “The Life of Pablo” features inspired, gospel-inflected choruses, beats that veer from soulful to experimental, West rapping about missing “the old Kanye” and one lyrical passage asserting he might “still” have sex with Taylor Swift and that he made the “bitch” famous.

The millions who tuned into the stream and patiently waited for their computers and smartphones to buffer could listen to the album, which includes collaborations with Chance the Rapper, Frank Ocean, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin, El DeBarge, Rihanna, Future, Kid Cudi, Ty Dolla Sign and the Weeknd.