Kanye West is certainly known to open his big mouth from time to time, but soon a bold statement could be costing him and TIDAL a lot of money. According to new reports, the "Famous" rapper is getting sued after his once-TIDAL exclusive new album The Life of Pablo was given a wide release.
Some fans are not happy that TLOP showed up on Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify and other major digital retailers and streaming services, Variety reports. A fan is suing West, TIDAL and the company's owner Jay Z for purposefully deceiving fans into believing The Life of Pablo was always going to be an exclusive to TIDAL.
And, there was good reason to believe that.
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
The lawsuit claims that the false advertisement of a TLOP exclusive led to millions of Kanye fans subscribing to the pricey premium streaming service. Indeed, according to TIDAL's own claims, TLOP was streamed 250 million times upon its release. The new West album also reportedly led over 2 million people to join TIDAL.
“By the time Mr. West changed course and broadly released The Life of Pablo the deceptive marketing ploy had served its purpose: Tidal’s subscriber numbers had tripled, streaming numbers were through the roof, and Tidal had collected the personal information, credit card numbers, and social media information of millions of deceived consumers,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit further claims that the TLOP lies earned TIDAL $84 million dollars in new revenue, all but saving the fledgling service.
The lawsuit is asking for TIDAL to reimburse fans who subscribd to the service in order to listen to The Life of Pablo. It is also asking for the service to stop automatically switching over free trials to paid subscriptions.
TIDAL and West have yet to respond publicly to the lawsuit or the claims that they falsely advertised TLOP as a TIDAL exclusive.
