Kanye West’s Donda 2 tops the (piracy) charts

completemusicupdate.com:

Kanye West’s ‘Donda 2’ album has rocketed to the top of the charts since its release late last week. The piracy charts, that is.The sequel to last year’s ‘Donda’ is, of course, only officially available to those willing to fork out $200 for one of the rapper’s Stem Player devices – an MP3 player that adds the ability to split tracks into four parts, so that users can remix the music themselves.West said that fans spent more than $2 million buying Stem Players in the 24 hours after it was announced that getting one would be the only way to hear ‘Donda 2’.

Still, even when coupled with any previous sales that occurred after the device was launched last year, that still only puts the number of people able to legitimately listen to the album in the tens of thousands.In his announcement, West said that the move not to release the album to any streaming services was a protest against the royalties that artists receive when their music is streamed.“Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes”, he wrote on Instagram. “It’s time to free music from this oppressive system.

It’s time to take control and build our own”.Not all artists can sell their music via prohibitively expensive bespoke electronic devices though.