On Monday, Kanye West fan Justin Baker-Rhett sued (PDF) West and S. Carter Enterprises (SCE), the company that owns music streaming service Tidal. Baker-Rhett alleges that the rapper and the streaming platform falsely promised that West’s most recent album, The Life of Pablo, would be exclusive to Tidal and would never show up on any other competing streaming service, nor would it be sold for download or in any physical media format. But just a month and a half after the release of Life of Pablo on Tidal, the album showed up on Apple Music and Spotify.
Baker-Rhett is asking the court to certify a class action against West and SCE, which is owned by rapper Jay-Z. The plaintiff claims that West and Tidal defrauded customers, engaged in false advertising, practiced unfair competition, and enjoyed unjust enrichment from the millions of subscribers who handed over their personal information to the company to sign up for the service because they believed Life of Pablo wouldn't be available anywhere else.
The complaint claims that Tidal found itself struggling to gain subscribers after its launch. But when West, who is an investor in Tidal and has a financial interest in the platform’s success, tweeted, “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal,” the platform’s subscription numbers allegedly jumped from 1 million to 3 million. Those 2 million subscribers were given a free trial period in exchange for submitting their credit card information, which was automatically charged if they did not cancel the subscription before the free period was over.
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