Kanye West's Album Pirated 500,000 Times In Wake Of His Twitter Meltdown

He’s already admitted he’s in £36million debt due to pursuing his ‘art’.

Now Kanye West isn’t making much from his latest album – as fans have downloaded it at least half-a-million times.   

The rapper, 38, released The Life Of Pablo on Jay-Z’s music streaming service Tidal three days ago and pledged it would ‘never never’ be on sale through Apple on his Twitter feed.

It has since become one of the most popular music downloads on The Pirate Bay, with the album appearing twice in the controversial file-sharing site’s top 10 music downloads, despite Kanye tweeting it would only available on Tidal.

The Recording Industry Association of America has already filed almost 20 takedown requests to Google for websites illegally hosting the material, Torrent Freak reported.

The level of piracy of The Life of Pablo is unusual, a Torrent Freak spokesman told the BBC. He said: “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.”

Kanye declared his album would never go on sale via Apple… then begged followers to sign up to Tidal to buy it as part of his desperate Twitter rants

It’s rounding off a very unpleasant week for Kanye. The rapper started a Twitter meltdown at the weekend when he begged Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg for a spare billion dollars so he could spread ‘beauty’ across the world – then asked him to give him a phonecall.

Taylor Swift also gave him a kicking in her Grammys speech. Her dig was payback for crashing her Video Of The Year award acceptance at the MTV awards in 2009 – and for claiming credit for her fame in his new track Famous, in which he also said he still may have sex with the country star.

Taylor said at the Grammys on Monday: “I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. “But if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday, when you get where you are going.”