Kanye West pulls huge numbers after expanding to Spotify, Apple

Kanye West’s unorthodox ideas about creating music and distributing them has proven a success for his seventh album The Life of Pablo.

Despite challenging the industry notion that a record should be issued in one go for biggest impact with consumers and the media, the released-in-stage Pablo has become the biggest selling hip-hop album so far this year.

It’s heading to #1 on the American charts. West has also transformed the way an album can creatively “grow” even after its release.

Pablo began as an exclusive to Tidal, of which West is a co-owner, from February 14. According to Tidal, it had 250,000 streams in the first ten days and is now at the 400,000 mark. The industry standard counts 1,500 streams as one album sold. Therefore 400 million streams is the equivalent of 257,000 albums. No other hip hop album has hit those sales yet in 2016.

Pablo encountered initial problems with Tidal. Because of technical glitches that accompanied its original release, 500,000 copies were illegally downloaded on the first day. West was reportedly furious. A song called Saint Pablo, to be released on his next album, addresses the issue: “I’ve been waking the spirits of millions more to come/A million illegally downloaded my truth over the drums.”

As part of the strategy, in February West tweeted, “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale … You can only get it on Tidal.”

That changed on Friday April 1. He rolled it out to Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. It’s a big move from Tidal, with 3 million users. Spotify has 100 million active users (as of January 2016) and 30 million subscribers. Apple Music has 11 million subscribers.

Since last Friday, The Life of Pablo notched up nearly 100 million streams on the additional services. That is the equivalent of 60,000 album sales.

It is the #1 album on Apple Music. West also has 10 of the Top 15 songs on the service, as well as seven of the top 10 and three of the top five.

Its impact is also felt for those on the album. Little known Brooklyn rapper Deslinger whose Panda was sampled is now #3 Apple and #9 on Spotify.

As part of the commercial roll-out of Pablo, Kanye has further moved the goal posts in two ways. The album can now be legally downloaded for US$20 at kanyewest.com. There is no physical format as yet, but that could change. In America, Def Jam started promoting the track Famous, featuring Rihanna, as a radio single.

The stretched-out release of Pablo has also meant that West has been able to update it with new beats, rhymes, alternate vocal takes and a new track list for the new streaming services. His record label Def Jam confirms: “In the months to come, Kanye will release new updates, new versions and new iterations of the album,” adding it is a “continuous process.”

So how has Kanye fared with other superstars? According to Spotify, Justin Bieber’s Purpose had 205 million global streams in its first week on the service, while Rihanna’s Anti had 309 million streams and The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind the Madness 311 million streams in their first six weeks.