In February 2016, Kanye West announced that he would release “The Life of Pablo,” his eighth studio album, as a Tidal exclusive. However, West’s decision sparked criticism as many believed the album would be lifted from the site and illegally re-released for free. Despite the criticism, West released his album exclusively on Tidal on February 14th, forcing fans to subscribe to the service to listen to the album. By February 17th, the album had been bootlegged over 500,000 times. A month later, West made a repackaged, alternative version of the album available on all other streaming sites.
As a result, several fans joined forces to file a class action suit against West, claiming he “conned” them into subscribing to Tidal for exclusivity when it would eventually be released everywhere.
The initial suit was filed last year by a fan named Justin Baker-Rhett. He referenced the tweet where Kanye said, “My album will never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.”
West has now fired back, saying that the album is a “living breathing changing creative expression.” According to TMZ, West has revealed there have been several changes made to the album since it’s initial release, but the original remains on Tidal. Therefore, he believes the suit should be tossed because his the original “Pablo” is still a TIDAL exclusive.
“The versions of The Life of Pablo that are available on other streaming services are different from the original, Tidal-only version,” noted the court docs. “Plaintiff does not dispute that there are differences between the versions of the album available on the different streaming services, and therefore he has not shown that Mr. West’s tweet about the exclusivity of The Life of Pablo on Tidal was false.”
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