Tidal Exclusivity Keeps Kanye’s Pablo From Billboard Charts
When Kanye West first released The Life Of Pablo, he made it available to stream on Tidal or to buy for $20. Less than 24 hours later, he took down the purchase option, and now he’s saying that it won’t ever be available anywhere except Tidal. That exclusivity was responsible for getting over half a million people to pirate The Life Of Pablo in a single day, and now it’s cost the album its spot on the Billboard charts, as The New York Times reports. According to a statement from Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard’s vice president of charts and data development, “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.” Way to go, Tidal!