Kanye West’s latest album has already been illegally downloaded more than half a million times, estimates Torrent Freak.<\/p>\n
The artist released The Life of Pablo on Jay-Z’s music streaming service Tidal two days ago.<\/p>\n
Thousands of subscribers have complained that they have been unable to download the album, despite paying for it.<\/p>\n
It is currently one of the most popular music downloads on The Pirate Bay.<\/p>\n
The new material appears twice in the controversial file-sharing site’s top 10 music downloads, despite Kanye West himself tweeting that it would only be available on Tidal.<\/p>\n
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has also filed nearly 20 takedown requests to Google for websites illegally hosting the material, Torrent Freak reports.<\/p>\n
However RIAA chief executive Cary Sherman wrote last year that the approach is increasingly ineffective.<\/p>\n
“While the system worked when isolated incidents of infringement occurred on largely static web pages – as was the case when the [US copyright] law was passed in 1998 – it is largely useless in the current world where illegal links that are taken down reappear instantaneously,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The result is a never-ending game that is both costly and increasingly pointless.”
\nThe level of piracy of The Life of Pablo is unusual, Ernesto from Torrent Freak told the BBC.<\/p>\n
“Generally we don’t track music releases closely, so I’m not calling any records,” he said.<\/p>\n
“However, I haven’t seen numbers this high before for a music release – not with Adele either.”
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kanye West’s latest album has already been illegally downloaded more than half a million times, estimates Torrent Freak. The artist released The Life of Pablo on Jay-Z’s music streaming service Tidal two days ago. Thousands of subscribers have complained that they have been unable to download the album, despite paying for it. It is currently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[403,137,11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n