We should have learned this lesson from Game of Thrones. When you put a series of hurdles between a feverishly anticipated piece of pop culture and regular folks, they are just going to walk around on the infield grass and steal it. Our latest example comes courtesy of Frank Ocean’s Blonde, an Apple Music exclusive that has nevertheless been illegally downloaded over 750,000 times in less than a week.
According to the data analytics company MUSO, Blonde has been illegally downloaded 753,849 times between its release on August 20 and 7 a.m. EST on August 26. And MUSO says that their numbers don’t include individual track downloads or illegally hosted streams of the album, which could significantly increase the number of people listening to ill-gotten Frank.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen numbers like this. The Life of Pablo was pirated at a similar rate when fans refused to go through Tidal for new ‘Ye (and Kanye refused to give them the option to purchase a finalized album).
It’s also not the first bit of release drama to come out of Frank Ocean’s latest album. The album was released independently after Endless fulfilled his contract with Universal/Def Jam, but Universal might not take that slick move lying down. The label may have grounds to sue Ocean based on the proximity of the two releases to one another.
(via Music Business Worldwide)
