Frank Ocean's Blonde has been illegally downloaded over 750,000 times
Frank Ocean's long-awaited comeback record Blonde has been a magnet for pirates, with 750,000 illegal downloads in its first week.
Music Business Worldwide notes - via MUSO - that one of Ocean's two recent albums has been a massive target for online pirates. Blonde was released as an Apple Music exclusive last weekend.
Kanye West's latest LP The Life Of Pablo suffered a similar fate when he gave it a limited release via TIDAL.
According to some, Ocean may have released Endless - a visual album and the first of last weekend's double whammy - to escape his Def Jam/Universal record contract. He had one album left on his deal, and by dropping Endless he was able to release Blonde himself - the bigger, more album-y album likely to earn a lot more money. Loopholes!
Universal are apparently, understandably, pissed. Following Ocean's releases, both of which were/are solely released on Apple Music, CEO Lucian Grainge outlawed the practice of giving one streaming service exclusives.
Despite all this, Ocean's LP has gone straight in at number one in the UK charts - with 32,000 sales.
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