Kanye West Accidentally Made Music Piracy Cool Again: Why This Can't Be Good for His Wallet

Yeezy brought back a trend that might not be so great for his crazy debt

By Dominique Haikel Feb 16, 2016 8:57 PMTags
Kanye West, The Life of Pablo Album Cover

Uh-oh. Kanye West may want to rethink his decision to release his album exclusively on Tidal if he's trying to get out of debt. 

Remember in middle school when it was cool to steal music off of the internet? We can't even tell you how fun it was to burn our friends mix CD's with terribly muffled versions of Britney Spears deep cuts. Thanks to The Life of Pablo, that very illegal trend is chic again. The BBC says Torrent Freak estimates Kanye's The Life of Pablo has already been pirated over 500,000 times since its release. Our wild guess? It's because nobody really wants or can afford to pay for Tidal. 

This can't be good for Yeezy's dwindling bank account, right? It seems like just yesterday the rapper was tweeting confidently about his cash when he called out Puma and their "measly millions." Since then, however, West has changed his tune, tweeting up a storm about his failing finances, saying things like "My dreams brought me into debt and I'm close to seeing the light of day…" We sure hope for his sake that last part of the tweet is true. 

The BBC says The Life of Pablo album is among the most popular on The Pirate Bay, one of the handful of sites where you can illegally download the album for free. Call us kooky, but somehow we don't think Kanye intended for his album to be handed out for free. Did somebody tell his accountant yet? What's an artist in debt to do? If you ask us (and probably the rest of his fans), we hope he'll consider releasing the album to the rest of the world. Stop trying to make Tidal happen, Kanye. It's not going to happen. Sure it's the number one app on the App Store right now but at what cost? No more furs for your family

Yeezy, we really respect you and want the best for you and your finances. From one debt-riddled person to another, here are our two cents (ha). Maybe if you release the album to the rest of us, you'll make enough money to pay off you debt, help out teachers and lower the cost of textbooks like you mentioned in today's Tweets. By letting Tidal hold your new music hostage, you're basically asking us to climb to the top of Mount Everest wearing custom Yeezy Season 3 in order to get a copy of your album. It's not that your fans don't want to buy your album the legal way. It's just that some of us don't have the resources to do so. Remember what you said about not having resources? Remember?!?! 

Do you think it's fair to Kanye if fans illegally download The Life of Pablo? We want to hear your thoughts in the comments!

 

Watch: Ty Dolla $ign Talks Working With Kanye West

Ty Dolla $ign talks working with Kanye on The Life of Pablo