(AllHipHop News) After news that Kanye West’s T.L.O.P. project was streamed over 99 million times in the first week and that 11 tracks from TLOP debuted on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, reports are surfacing of a lawsuit against Kanye West and Tidal.
The class action lawuit filed in San Francisco’s U.S. Distric Court says that Kanye “fraudulantly promised fans that his album, ‘The Life Of Pablo,’ would be only available on Tidal.”
Despite those claims from Kanye via his Twitter page and Tidal’s 9.99 minimum charge, the album was since released on Apple Music and Spotify.
According to NBC’s KCRA, Justin Baker-Rhett contends that the promise of exclusivity gave the struggling Tidal a boost in sales and consumer information. Baker-Rhett is asking that a judge delete all information collected for uses that signed up specifically for Kanye’s album.
“Mr West’s promise on exclusivity also had a grave impact on consumer privacy,” Baker-Rhett’s lawsuit explains.
The lawsuit also assails that in addition to the personal information and credit card info, Tidal reportedly made an upwards of $84 million off the project.
At one point the lawsuit brings up Kanye’s famed Twitter posting again are the focus as his proclamation stating, “My album will never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.”
“We fully support the right of artists to express themselves freely and creatively, however creative freedom is not a license to mislead the public,” Baker-Rhett’s attorney Jay Edelson said in a statement to KCRA. “We believe that we will be able to prove to a jury that Mr. West and Tidal tricked millions of people into subscribing to their services and that they will ultimately be held accountable for what they did.”
