Fan sues Kanye, Tidal, over “trickery”

Kanye West and the Tidal music streaming service may have trumpeted from the rooftops how West’s The Life Of Pablo was streamed more than 250 million times within 10 days of release; but those figures could be key in a legal action filed in San Francisco’s U.S. District Court.

In a proposed class action lawsuit with the help of Chicago law firm Edelson PC, Kanye fan Justin Baker-Rhett said he was “tricked” into subscribing to Tidal after West tweeted in February it was the only place where the album could be bought.

West’s tweet to his 2 million Twitter followers insisted, “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.”

As a result, Baker-Rhett and millions others signed up to Tidal at US$9.99 (A$12.81) a month. However six weeks later, the album was on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Pandora and on his own website. He cancelled his Tidal subscription when he found out.

Baker-Rhett alleges that the exclusivity claim was a ploy to build up the subscription numbers for Tidal, which was “quietly teetering on the brink of collapse” despite the superstar firepower which co-owned it.

According to the suit, “In reality, neither Mr. West nor [Jay Z’s company] S. Carter Enterprises ever intended The Life of Pablo to run exclusively on the Tidal platform. To the contrary, they — knowing that Tidal was in trouble but not wanting to invest their own money to save the company — chose to fraudulently induce millions of American consumers into paying for Tidal’s rescue.”

As a result of the claim, it contends, Tidal tripled its subscriber base to 3 million, adding $60 million ($77 million) to its valuation – “the lifeblood of any new startup” – to $84 million ($107.7 million)

The “ploy” also was a threat to customers’ privacy after they turned over personal, credit card and social media info.

The $5 million ($6.4 million) lawsuit seeks class action status for people who subscribed to Tidal from February 15 to April 1 and streamed Pablo tracks within 24 hours. It wants actual and punitive damages, and for all the subscribers’ personal data to be deleted.