Kanye West’s walk-back off his vow that latest album “The Life of Pablo” would only stream on Jay Z’s Tidal is about to become a full-on sprint in the other direction.
The full album is expected to land on Tidal’s biggest competitor, Spotify, tomorrow, sources confirmed to TheWrap, and Rhapsody and Google Play Music confirmed they would have “Life of Pablo” on Friday too. Mashable earlier reported that the album also was expected to be released Friday to Apple Music, where Kanye swore it would never appear.
Representatives for Apple Music and Tidal did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Last month, in one of his characteristic Twitter rants, the hip-hop megastar promised his latest album would only be available on the Tidal streaming service, in which he’s part owner.
My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016
But on Monday, one of the album’s most high-profile singles, “Famous,” cropped up on Apple Music, Spotify and Rhapsody — all Tidal rivals. As the week went on, the track “I Love Kanye” also spread to Spotify, Apple Music and Rhapsody, as well as the new paid tier of Soundcloud, launched this week.
SoundCloud told TheWrap it didn’t have details to share on West’s album.
Even Kanye’s proclamation last month was an about-face from Twitter rants just days earlier, when he indicated that “The Life of Pablo” would be available for sale conventionally a week after it launched on Tidal exclusively.
This week Tidal said “The Life of Pablo” was streamed 250 million times in its first 10 days; the service has three million subscribers, while industry-leader Spotify has 30 million paid members.
West’s decision to release his album only on Tidal rocketed the service to the top of Apple’s App Store charts, but it also stoked a field day of piracy. After its first day of availability, piracy blog TorrentFreak estimated that 500,000 people had downloaded the album.