While you can’t put a price on life, Kanye’s much anticipated album The Life of Pablo cost him about $10 million in sales. On the first day of the album’s release an estimated 500,000 people downloaded it illegally. The New York Post estimated that if the pirating civilians had paid the $20 it cost to buy the album, West would have personally made $10 million just on the first day of the album’s release.
Kanye announced that his album will only be available on Tidal, the digital music service which is subscription based and owned by Jay Z and other music artists.
Financial dramas
The massive piracy hit doesn’t help Kanye’s already restrained financial situation in which the artist claimed in his tweets, “I cannot create what I Want.” Kanye supposedly has big plans for the world (apparently bigger than him running for president): he has publicly asked Mark Zuckerberg for a billion dollar loan in supporting his ideas, and requesting the support of his followers. The piracy issues comes at the perfect time for West as he has claimed he is $53 million in debt.
‘World, please tweet, FaceTime, Facebook, instagram, whatever you gotta do to get Mark to support me …’ great words from Mr West himself. Interestingly, he claims he and his family to be the “new Jacksons” in his song High Lights…
Potential legal action
Kanye and his legal team are supposedly planning on taking action against Pirate Bay, the website that allowed the piracy of his album over half a million times. This time Kanye’s attitude may be justified, he has lost potentially millions due to piracy.
To make it worse, other 15 unheard tracks, including Kanye’s collaboration with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, a remix of “All Day” with Kendrick Lamar and Paul McCartney, and other versions of The Life of Pablo tracks got leaked very recently. A reddit user posted the links to all 15 songs, even though all the songs have been taken down now. This is ironic given that Kanye had been bragging on Twitter about his unreleased music. Not all publicity is good publicity.
Let us know your thoughts on Kanye’s piracy issues by tagging us #lawpath or @lawpath.
