Kanye West, TIDAL Sued Over "The Life Of Pablo"
A Kanye West fan has filed a lawsuit against the rapper and TIDAL claiming that they misled users into subscribing based on West's assertion that that The Life of Pablo would never be for sale anywhere other than TIDAL.
"My album will never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal," West wrote in February. TLOP became available for purchase on Apple Music and Spotify for free at the beginning of April.
In a proposed class action lawsuit, plaintiff Justin Baker-Rhett is requesting that TIDAL "delete information collected on users who signed up for West's album," reports Bloomberg.
"Mr. West's promise of exclusivity also had a grave impact on consumer privacy," the lawsuit states. It estimates that new subscribers and their personal information gained from fans looking to stream the album are worth as much as $84 million to TIDAL. The first ten days following the release of TLOP saw 250 million streams of the album and 1.5 million new TIDAL subscribers.
"We fully support the right of artists to express themselves freely and creatively, however creative freedom is not a license to mislead the public," Baker-Rhett's attorney Jay Edelson wrote in a statement.
"We believe that we will be able to prove to a jury that Mr. West and Tidal tricked millions of people into subscribing to their services and that they will ultimately be held accountable for what they did."
