Kanye West? You remember the “Ye” album release? It was, what, two weeks ago? Kanye and DefJam flew 150 people to the wilds of Wyoming for the album release. Then they had another album release party in Brooklyn. Kanye was everywhere.
Right around that time, when Kanye was supporting Donald Trump very vocally, and announcing his diagnosis of bipolar illness, a friend of mine who’s back said, “That album? No black person wants that album.”
And so, two weeks later, the “Ye” album, priced to sell at $7.99, is over. This week “Ye” sold just under 39,000 “copies.” Most of that was from streaming. There were only around 6,400 paid downloads.
Kanye’s other album, “Kids See Ghosts,” with Kid Cudi, in its second week, sold around 33,373 copies– again mostly from streaming. Paid downloads came in around 7,800.
The money Kanye is seeing from streaming isn’t much for a celebrity with his overhead. On hitsdailydouble’s Song Streaming Revenue Chart, Kanye and Kid Cudi’s songs together earned around $700,000. The licensing and expense fees are high for all those tracks. The biggest Kids See Ghosts tracks is actually listed “with Louis Prima,” the late jazz star. The Prima estate is getting prima money for that sample.
