Waiting for Kanye to release The Life Of Pablo has been one of the most stressful rides of all time. The messy release finally happened on Thursday via Tidal, with Kanye confirming that it “would never be for sale” on iTunes and would only be available on the music streaming subscription service.
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Fans, eager to hear the album and frustrated by its limited availability, have decided to go through the back door with illegal downloads. The Life Of Pablo is popping on just about every torrent site on the web—it’s currently the most popular download on The Pirate Bay. The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) is doing everything possible to curb illegal downloading in general, but efforts have pretty much been futile. So, if you really want TLOP and don’t want to pay for streaming, it won’t be that hard to get.
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However, the frequency of TLOP downloads has been pretty wild. A member of Torrent Freak tells the BBC,
“Generally we don’t track music releases closely, so I’m not calling any records. However, I haven’t seen numbers this high before for a music release—not with Adele either.”
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The site estimates that the album has been downloaded over half a million times.