Kanye West’s oversharing on Twitter might have landed him in court, with the news that one of the rapper’s fans has sued him and streaming service Tidal over a lack of promised exclusivity concerning his new album The Life of Pablo.
Many were confused when news arrived at the end of March that Kanye’s seventh album would be available via Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services, when the rapper himself had previously tweeted that The Life of Pablo would “never be sale” and would only ever be available via Jay Z’s streaming site Tidal.
In a post dated February 15th, just days after West had released it, he wrote: “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.”
Jay Z’s Tidal service was originally the only place to listen to ‘The Life of Pablo’
Just another statement of braggadocio by Kanye, you might say. However, one disappointed fan named Justin Baker-Rhett who swapped his Spotify account for a Tidal subscription, handing over $ 9.99 a month, is arguing that Kanye’s tweet was an “unequivocal declaration” that to go back on it by making The Life of Pablo available on April 1st constituted false advertising.
Tidal’s subscription numbers reportedly swelled from 1 million to almost 3 million in the wake of The Life of Pablo’s mid-February release, according to the class-action suit filed in San Francisco by other similarly affected fans.
More: Jay Z suing former Tidal owners for misrepresentation of subscription numbers
“Our phones are ringing off the hook from class members who are very disappointed in Kanye and Tidal. They feel like they were duped,” Baker-Rhett’s lawyer Jay Edelson told New York Daily News on Monday (April 18th). “This was a carefully written series of tweets, and he made it very clear the only way to listen was to get on Tidal. It’s not like someone shoved a microphone in his face and he said something.”
Edelson also dismissed that line of argument that states you should take seriously anything Kanye says via social media. “If they want to make the argument that you can never trust anything Kanye says in a business context, I think that’s very dangerous for them.”
Kanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ is now available on Apple Music and Spotify
The 38 year old rapper owns a stake in Tidal, although it is primarily owned by fellow hip-hop mogul Jay Z, who is himself filing a lawsuit against the streaming service’s former owners for falsely inflating its subscription numbers before the $ 56.2 million takeover was concluded in January 2015.
On top of the financial aspects, the lawsuit also concerns consumer privacy, alleging that Tidal collects a massive amount of e-mail addresses, social media data, browsing history and credit card information while users are interacting with the service.
More: Kanye West described as the “perfect guest” by Isle of Skye hotel owners
ultra hd
Salt [Blu-ray]Evelyn Salt, a trusted and loyal CIA operative, goes on the run when a Russian defector convinces her superiors that she’s a dou…
Toshiba BDX5500 3D 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Online Media PlayerThe Symbio streaming media box is a Blu-ray Disc player, DVD player, CD player, and streaming media box all in one. Enjoy your fav…
Chappie [Blu-ray]In the near future, crime is patrolled by an oppressive mechanized police force. But now, the people are fighting back. When one p…
Sicario [4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital HD]From the director of Prisoners comes this taut, critically acclaimed thriller filled with pulse-pounding suspense. After an ideali…
