To say that Kanye West’s rollout for his seventh album “The Life of Pablo” has been messy would be a major understatement. After delays, multiple title changes, erratic Twitter posts, another Chance the Rapper-led delay and a Tidal-only release, the all-things-considered really great album has hit another obstacle: It didn’t even crack the Billboard 200 Albums chart.
Thank Tidal. As the New York Times reports, Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard’s vice president of charts and data, revealed, “Billboard has been informed that Tidal is not currently reporting streams for tracks on Kanye’s album to Nielsen Music. Therefore streams from Tidal for this title will not contribute to Billboard’s chart rankings at this time.” The news comes just a few weeks after Rihanna also premiered her album “Anti” on the service, which intitially opened Billboard’s charts at a low No. 27 then shot to the top the following week after becoming available for purchase on other platforms.
Kanye, who recently tweeted that his album would be streaming exclusively on Tidal permanently and hinted that the album fans are listening to may not even be the final version, is taking a huge gamble by placing all his bets on the notoriously tumultous Jay Z-backed company. As TorrentFreak notes, “after the first day an estimated 500,000 people have already grabbed a copy” on illegal pirating sites—which, whoa. Considering those are just first-day reports, it’s easy to imagine those numbers have multiplied now more than a week later. If “Pablo” had been made for sale at multiple outlets, it’s easy to speculate ‘Ye would have beat out Adele’s “25,” which took the No. 1 slot (still! no surprise there!) with 151,000 copies sold.
Either way, regardless of whether or not Kanye cares about Billboard’s charts (he probably doesn’t), Tidal’s decision not to release streaming numbers for its exclusives to Nielsen can have consequences for its artists. In this streaming-based world where each service has its own exclusives, it’s more difficult for the consumer to catch up (should I download Apple Music for Taylor Swift’s discography or Tidal for Kanye West’s “Pablo” and Prince’s catalog? What about Spotify?). Even still, if enough high-profile names choose Tidal for exclusives, this shift may signal the beginning of the end of Billboard’s cultural relevance (i.e., how long did it take them to count streams?). Looking at how Tidal has bungled most of its high profile events, it’s unlikely that will happen.
Kanye has a great album on his hands but handing over the reigns to Tidal might prove to be even more costly than a lack of chart performance. Will people keep listening after their free trials are up?
@joshhterry | jterry@redeyechicago.com
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