Is Kanye West a genius, a lunatic, a megalomaniac, an egomanic, or an amalgamation of all four? That’s just one of the puzzles on the table this week following the launch of the new album by the self-styled “greatest artist of all time.”
For those just who’ve just returned to civilization following a week long trek to the Amazon basin, West launched his new album last Saturday. Then, following the genius decision to limit its availability only to those subscribing to Tidal, Life of Pablo was illegally downloaded, uploaded, torrented, streamed, swapped and exchanged all over the Internet, all week long, without West getting a cent.
Stop the press – did anyone really think that it wouldn’t?
Restricting the availability of the album reviewed by West himself as “one of the greatest” of all time was a move that probably made commercial sense somewhere along the line. After all, these industry people know what they’re doing, right? But isn’t artificial restriction and man-made shortages what caused piracy to boom in the first place?
What’s perhaps most frustrating about this entire episode is that the pirating masses had just begun to understand that music can be obtained legally, conveniently and at a reasonable price via services such as Spotify. Signing up for a fair monthly fee would rid of them of their piracy habits while rewarding creators, customers were told.
Then along came West, waving his self-important “exclusive” flag while shitting all over fans’ $10 and £10 per month subscriptions. Like a rich and perverted Oliver Twist (and without a billion forthcoming from Zuckerberg), West still wants more.
Look, West is a popular guy, no doubt about that. Even his most ridiculous of tweets (and there are plenty of them) get tens of thousands of positive reactions. Millions love his music too, that can’t be taken away from him. But apparently he’s now surprised and angry that his music is being pirated to heaven and back. Is he really that self-absorbed that he didn’t see this coming?
With further Twitter rants now appearing tantalizingly on the horizon and about to put yet more icing on this considerably over-baked cake, Jesus West is now reportedly thinking of kicking some pirate ass by taking on the people behind The Pirate Bay.
“He’s going to talk to his lawyers and see where he stands, and hopefully Tidal will partner up with him in any legal proceedings because it was supposed to be an exclusive release,” a source revealed this week.
From a selfish perspective this is the best news, almost ever. The prospect of Kanye West spouting daily anti-Pirate Bay rhetoric on Twitter and in the media guarantees we’ll never be short of something to write. And if he can rope Kim in to say something controversial too, that would be beyond brilliant.
But most of all we should be pleased for The Pirate Bay. Since the raid in late 2014 things haven’t quite been the same on the PR front for the notorious site. There hasn’t been a lot in the way of provocative comments (certainly nothing involving retractable batons) and as a result they’ve been losing ground to a surging KickassTorrents who are now grabbing the limelight.
To be frank, an expensive lawsuit initiated by someone like Kanye West is just what The Pirate Bay needs. Then, every day when he says something dumb on Twitter, the millions of West fans who haven’t yet heard of The Pirate Bay can be introduced to the site, learn all about torrents, and tell Tidal to shove their subscriptions where the sun don’t shine.
Sadly, some will also use their new-found knowledge to tell Spotify to screw themselves too.
The point here is that this needless posturing over a single album has the potential to considerably damage people’s trust in legal services. Sure, Tidal will have benefited short term, but what West has done is shown fans that subscribing to just one service is not enough and that any point any ‘star’ can flick a switch and require them to pay out more money.
The uncomfortable truth here is that The Pirate Bay has never done that. Sure, the site gives nothing to creators and that will understandably sit poorly with some, but people know where they stand with the site. It is there, week in and week out, and it always costs nothing to use. There’s a reason it has tens of millions of users and West’s exclusive just gave the site yet more recruits. It’s insane.
What Kanye needs to know is that despite the mock begging in the title, suing The Pirate Bay would be the most stupid thing in the world. It didn’t work for Prince, it didn’t work for Michael Jackson. It even managed to make the Village People look like fools.
Kanye, the way you deal with The Pirate Bay is to stop giving fans a reason to go there. The notion of online exclusivity is so old fashioned it’s mind-bending. Easy access to all music for everyone at a fair price is what you should be aiming for – rant about that in a tweet when you get a minute.
