Kanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ Streamed 250 Million Times in 10 Days

Kanye West

Dan Rys, writing for Billboard, on TIDAL’s recently released streaming and subscriber numbers. Apparently Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo was streamed 250 million times in the first 10 days of release.

Tidal also finally released numbers for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo streams for the first time, after West requested the service withhold the numbers when the album first became available in February. According to Tidal, Pablo surpassed 250 million streams in its first 10 days of release. Pablo, which West previously said would only ever exist on Tidal, has been going through some changes in real time of late as the artist updates certain tracks, and just yesterday made the single “Famous,” featuring Rihanna, available on both Apple Music and Spotify, ending his Tidal-only crusade.

SoundCloud Launches Subscription Service

Soundcloud

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge, on SoundCloud’s new subscription service.

Though anyone can create a SoundCloud account and upload songs unworthy of your time, some huge artists also use it to publish tracks that you won’t find anywhere else. Kanye West, for instance, posted a new song over the weekend that you won’t even find on Tidal. It’s his fourth track exclusive to SoundCloud.

But bonus tracks only go so far. What matters for a subscription music service is how many paid tracks are available, and SoundCloud Go appears to have far fewer than its top competitors. SoundCloud is advertising a library of 125 million songs, but at least 110 million of those are free, user-uploaded tracks. While Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and the other big streaming services have around 30 million paid songs, SoundCloud Go appears to include closer to 15 million.

This feels like a divergence from what makes SoundCloud unique.

Laura Jane Grace: “About That Title”

Against Me!

Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! wrote a blog discussing the title of her upcoming book.

But the title fits the book. After we had been working on it for months, and had poured several thousand words into it, I told Dan what I wanted to call it. “Now that I’ve heard it, I can’t imagine it being called anything else,” he said. There is a certain element of expletive present behind the title, sure, but in no way did I arrive at it for the purpose of sensationalism. I’m not attempting to publish a self-aggrandizing piece of writing here. TRANNY is an incredibly scathing look back at my life. There are themes of hatred and aggression, directed at me from other people, but mostly inwardly, from myself. I’ve been called horrible insults and slurs over my career, my reactions to some have even famously landed me in jail. But I’ve learned to adapt by embracing them, and using them as armor, which should be apparent from the subtitle: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout.