Kanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ Hits Number One

Call me old fashioned, but I don't think streams can be made equivalent to sales.

 

Didn't Sleeping With Sirens move 70k albums the first week with their second-to-last release? And yet that beats out nearly 100,000,000 streams by one of the top-selling artists in the industry. Don't get me wrong, I love Spotify, but the current economics of streaming are undeniably horseshit.

 

Definitely think there's a sweet spot for streams = album sales, but not sure that's it. Regardless, this was one of my most anticipated this year and I haven't even listened yet bc I want physical and well...I'm afraid to.

 

I didn't think you could even buy this album? Wouldn't it all be from streams? Or are they counting the people that paid for and never received the album?

It's really good. I hate how good it is. I wanted to be out on Kanye but he pulled me back in.

 

He'd sell a lot more if he just put it up on iTunes!

 

I feel like this album just isn't what he wanted it to be which bums me out. I want to listen to something that I know was written, packaged and released with full confidence. Him redoing all of the songs, adding, editing tracks, made it worse for me. I still haven't listened to the 'new' version all of the way through but maybe it'll change my mind.

 

So the 28,000 albums sold were all digital, right?

 

Only place: KANYE WEST - THE LIFE OF PABLO ALBUM

 

Me too. It's crazy, when I was a kid CDs were still the biggest format around (mix CDs alone). But I stream everyday, and the only physicals most of my friends buy are vinyl or just merch instead.

 

I hope Kanye releases his next album exclusively on Hit Clips. Also I can't believe they opted to spell "Hit Clips" without a "z."

 

Did people actually start receiving the album? I remember when it was supposed to be released everyone on /r/hiphopheads were complaining about paying for it but not being sent anything.

Edit: I guess it still counts towards the sales, regardless, which is interesting.

 

For SEA, why 1500?

 

I agree, I get why they use that as a metric now but it doesn't carry the same weight as an album purchase. Less commitment involved when you just have to click the song and listen to it for free instead of weighing its worth to you and whether or not its value is great enough spend money on in particular.

 

I was actually going to google how many streams would be the equivalent of buying an album, but I found that out thanks for this thread (SEAs). I just checked my last.fm and I feel bad about all of the albums I didn't buy over the past two years when I stopped buying physical. I only had 5 albums that would have made the SEA requirement.

 

A fellow best friend, I see?

 

INDEED! We're everywhere!

 

Overrated, overhyped, over everything. I'm a Kanye fan, but I'm glad I waited until it showed up on Spotify to listen to this album.

 

@s12sim I've given it a couple listens so far, but still nothing. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is definitely my favorite of his, and I still enjoy his albums previous to that one. This newest one is comparable to Yeezus, both of which are decent albums but nothing really groundbreaking IMO. Either way I'm not quite giving up on it yet.