Kanye West's new album "The Life of Pablo" had 500,000 downloads on its first day alone, according to TorrentFreak, which would have been enough to certify it as "gold" if those downloads were from iTunes or official sales. 
 
 The problem? Those were illegal downloads on BitTorrent, and Kanye didn't see a single dime from them. 
 
 So far, the only place you can legally listen to the new album is Tidal, Jay Z's streaming service, where it remains an exclusive. 
 
 And that might not change any time soon. Kanye has declared that he will never sell his album — on iTunes or anywhere else. 
 
 “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal,” Kanye wrote in a tweet over the weekend. 
 
 This presents a problem for fans, and highlights a big problem with streaming exclusives in general. While Tidal does include the option for a 30-day free trial, or even a 90-day one if you know where to look, many people have taken to social media to voice their frustration with the release process, and have strongly implied that they downloaded the album illegally because they can't easily buy it. Plenty of people would be willing to pay for the album up front, but they don't want to have to sign up for a new streaming service in order to do so. 
 
 TorrentFreak said it had observed 10,000 people sharing a copy of a particular "TLOP" torrent simultaneously: "something we haven't seen with a music release before." 
 
 But that doesn't mean Kanye's rollout should immediately be considered a failure. The release of "TLOP" shot Tidal up to the top of the app download charts, and we don't know what kind of deal Kanye got for giving it exclusively to Tidal. 
 
 One clue: Kanye tweeted that Tidal is "funding a lot of my scripted content ideas." ||||| My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal. ||||| Wait, Kanye West's album still hasn't been released to the public? You'd never know, based on a quick look at the Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents and a range of other piracy websites, where “The Life of Pablo” is freely available and has been downloaded illegally hundreds of thousands of times. 
 
 West surprised the world Saturday night when he released his long delayed new album, “The Life of Pablo,” after performing two songs on “Saturday Night Live.” The album was for sale on his website for only a few hours, and the rapper has since said his new music will only be available on Tidal, the subscription streaming service backed by Jay Z, Rihanna, and yes Kaye. But Kanye somehow forgot that “The Life of Pablo” would inevitably leak to torrent websites, and spark an explosion of downloads among people who know how to steal music. 
 
 My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal. — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016 
 
 That was enough to earn “The Life of Pablo” at least 500,000 downloads over the weekend, according to an estimate published by TorrentFreak Tuesday. There were also 10,000 or so users sharing the album at once, a number that hasn't been associated with a music file in years. The Recording Industry Association of America has noticed, and has inundated Google with Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests asking that pirated Kanye West files be stricken from search results. ||||| Kanye West/Peter de Potter 
 
 From calling out President George W Bush after Hurricane Katrina, to his recently and gloriously erratic tweets, Kanye West is no stranger to viral outrage. The release of his seventh album, The Life of Pablo, has been no exception -- and it's been making waves outside of the media, too. 
 
 Kanye has been a vocal supporter of Tidal, Jay Z's music streaming service, since it first launched in 2015 -- so much so, in fact, that he recently claimed that TLOB will "never never be on Apple". 
 
 "It will never be for sale," he tweeted. "You can only get it on Tidal." 
 
 But Tidal is a paid service -- so where can a Kanye West fan hear his latest work of art? And what impact has it actually made? 
 
 Tidal Wave 
 
 Interest in Tidal increased dramatically 
 
 Most obviously, Kanye keeping his album exclusively on Tidal, at least for now, has given a boost to that service. 
 
 Although Tidal requires a paid subscription, it definitely got a boost from Kanye -- searches for the streaming site leapt up around 14 February, when Kanye first discussed streaming The Life of Pablo, according to Google Trends. It also translated into downloads: according to App Annie, an app analytics platform, Tidal jumped several hundred places in the Apple Store's charts. On Saturday 6 February, Tidal was a paltry 847th overall and 51st in the UK music app download charts, on the iOS App Store. By Monday, it was 1st in the music charts and 13th overall. 
 
 The boost wasn't as obvious for the Play Store -- it's only 34th in music and 440th overall, currently -- but overall downloads did increase. 
 
 Torrents 
 
 For those unwilling to sign up for even a free trial of Tidal, there was another option -- torrenting. 
 
 According to TorrentFreak, around 500,000 copies of The Life Of Pablo were illegally torrented on the first day it was available. At the time of writing, over 10,000 copies of the album were being torrented on the Pirate Bay at once. "Kanye torrent" also increased significantly on Google Trends. According to TorrentFreak, it's not the only way the album is being distributed. 
 
 "Aside from torrent sites, the album is also being widely distributed on various direct download services and hosting sites, increasing the overall piracy numbers even further," they wrote. A DMCA notice has been issued, but copies keep popping up. 
 
 As for Kanye? Social network hype balloon Ello still exists -- maybe he'll release his next album there? It could probably use the boost.
– Kanye West declared on Twitter Monday that "My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal." But apparently not everyone is interested in paying $9.99 a month just to get access to The Life of Pablo, because TorrentFreak reports that an estimated half-million people had already illegally downloaded a copy of the album via BitTorrent within a day of its release. And that's not counting those who grabbed the album via "various direct download services and hosting sites," TorrentFreak notes. At the time of its posting Tuesday, TorrentFreak saw nearly 10,000 people sharing one of the most popular Pablo torrents simultaneously, "something we haven't seen with a music release before." Many others, who did sign up for Tidal, apparently struggled to actually obtain the album; TorrentFreak says Tidal's support desk was "flooded with complaints." The site estimates that Tidal probably got "tens of thousands of new subscribers" thanks to West's limited release, and Business Insider notes that Tidal "shot ... to the top of the app download charts" after the album's release, so it's difficult to say whether that cancels out the illegal downloads. Google searches for both Tidal and "Kanye torrent" got a huge boost after West announced his release plans for the album, Wired reports. The International Business Times notes that West also sold the album on his website, but only for a few hours Saturday.