The Life of Pablo is a hit, but it’s not for sale ... yet
In the week since Kanye West debuted his new album, “The Life of Pablo,” with an elaborate listening session-fashion show at Madison Square Garden, the music has earned rave reviews, been featured on “Saturday Night Live” and inspired a rebuke from Taylor Swift onstage at the Grammy Awards.
In the attention economy, “The Life of Pablo” (Def Jam) is a blockbuster. The only problem: It’s not for sale. According to West, the album is not even finished.
After closing his triumphant “SNL” performance with a garbled announcement that “The Life of Pablo” was for sale digitally at kanyewest.com and streaming on Tidal, the music service in which he is a partner, the capricious West quickly pulled the commercial version and has taken to stating his conflicting intentions for the songs in freeform posts on Twitter.
But the unconventional and, in many ways, unprecedented album rollout has left some fans without the downloads they already paid for, while streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify remain uncertain as to when — or if — “The Life of Pablo” will be widely available.
After “SNL,” thousands who rushed to pay $20 to download “The Life of Pablo” failed to receive the files despite being charged by Tidal. (Those who did receive the download that night experienced their own glitch — instead of the final track, the second-to-last song was included twice.) Complaints flooded social media and on Monday, Tidal emailed its customers an update: “A partial version of the album is available for streaming on Tidal.com, but the download is currently not available.”
“The final version of the album will be released in the next several days,” the message continued, offering a refund to those uninterested in waiting.
West then announced on Twitter, his preferred megaphone of late, that he had “decided not to sell my album for another week,” and urged his 19 million followers to subscribe to Tidal, which is owned by his longtime collaborator Jay Z. (“Ima fix wolves,” West added of one track on the album.) He went on to say that “The Life of Pablo” would “never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale ... You can only get it on Tidal.” Apple declined to comment.
Other streaming services are standing by expectantly for the album. Spotify, which has 20 million subscribers, said in a statement, “We hope to have it soon.”
A placeholder for the album on Spotify includes the message: “The artist or their representatives have decided not to release this album on Spotify just yet. We’re working on it, and hope we can change their minds soon.” The same note is used for albums by Adele and Taylor Swift, who have also withheld their music from the service.
Def Jam, West’s label, declined to comment. But a source close to West, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the album’s release, said that there is a plan — including talk of a deluxe physical edition — in the works, although the source could not confirm the timeline, citing West’s creative process.
In the meantime, “The Life of Pablo” has become a huge hit on music piracy websites. Torrent Freak, a site that tracks BitTorrent and copyright news, estimated that by Tuesday the album had been illegally downloaded more than 500,000 times.