In a now-deleted Instagram post, Kanye West claims he turned down a $100 million offer from Apple writing, “No one can pay me to be disrespected.” This came after the rapper artist slammed Apple Music, among other streaming services, for undervaluing artists in a series of Instagram posts.
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Kanye West and Apple Music are teaming up for a third exclusive livestream on Apple Music next week. According to a new report from Variety, Kanye is holding a third public listening session for his unreleased Donda album, and it will be exclusively live streamed on Apple Music.
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Kanye West was in Washington D.C today to meet with President Trump in the Oval Office. As you might expect from such a combination of two people, the day wielded some interesting tidbits: an “iPlane” replacement for Air Force One designed by Apple, West’s uber-secure iPhone passcode, and a table-top keynote at the Georgetown Apple store.
Update: Despite an expected midnight release, the album is not yet available. It has also been renamed to “Ye.”
Two years ago, Kanye West released his album ‘The Life of Pablo.’ The album was exclusive to Tidal for two months, despite the rapper claiming it would “never” hit Apple Music. Now, West is preparing to release another new album, but this one won’t be delayed on Apple Music…
Kanye West recently made his triumphant return to Twitter, sharing his thoughts on politics, fashion, and much more. Now, the rapper and fashion designer is turning his attention towards technology, publicly calling for a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook…
Not one to shy away from the spotlight, Kanye West has announced that this weekend he’ll be opening up 21 pop shops around the world, some of which will be exclusively accepting Apple Pay thanks to a partnership with Square. Square’s contactless readers will be available in the U.S., Canada, and Australia so that customers can focus on paying for their items as quickly as possible. West claimed that the last pop-up shop had generated $2 million in sales in New York City alone, so a high revenue weekend like this could be great exposure for Square’s technology.
After bringing his new album to Apple Music and Spotify, fans are suing Kanye West claiming they purchased subscriptions to West-backed music app Tidal on the promise the album would be exclusive to the service.
Recode today reports that Kanye West might be making a full u-turn with his latest album by actually offering it to stream on Spotify and Apple Music. Just this week one of the tracks from the album hit Apple Music, further driving speculation that a full release was imminent.
Kanye West, who previously said that his Life of Pablo album would “never never be on Apple” appears to have partially changed his mind, Pitchfork noting that the ‘Famous’ track from the album is now available on Apple Music.
West’s previous tweet was one of a series that made for entertaining reading, the rapper also begging for $1B investment in “Kanye ideas” and claiming to be $53M in debt.
The version available in Apple Music does have one changed lyric, “she in school to be a real estate agent” replacing “she be Puerto Rican day parade wavin’.”
Apple updated its Android app last week, while Shazam for iOS made it easier to add Shazammed songs to Apple Music libraries.
Via The Verge
Kanye West must actually be $50 million in debt like he claimed, as today he’s getting called out for exposing his own illegal downloading activity in a tweet.
In case you missed Apple’s fight with the FBI this week, the launch of Apple in China, or any of the other big Apple stories we’ve covered, below we’ve rounded up this week’s top stories and recommended reading to get you up to date over the weekend. Enjoy.
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As his bizarre Twitter tirade continues, Kanye West this evening has shared that his latest album “The Life of Pablo” will never be on Apple Music and will remain an exclusive to Jay-Z’s Tidal streaming service. The tweet was posted in the midst of another rant by Kanye, during which he criticized various new outlets and told everyone to “shut up and enjoy the greatness.”
In between a fashion show and album debut at his super confusing Madison Square Garden event yesterday, Kanye West also found some time to take the wraps off his upcoming video game dubbed “Only One”.
Apple’s upcoming Beats-based streaming music service will likely be named “Apple Music” and will have deep social networking integration for artists, according to industry sources briefed on the plans for the new service.
Taking a page out of the discontinued iTunes Ping feature from earlier this decade, the service will allow artists to have their own pages within the streaming music service that they can use to post track samples, photos, videos, and concert updates.
Artists will also be able to share the content of other artists in an effort of cross-promotion. For example, all-gold Apple Watch wearer Kanye West could promote a new album from Taylor Swift on his “Apple Music” artist page, if he so chooses…
Kanye West hasn’t been shy when it comes to expressing his opinions about Apple. Earlier this week he sat down for an interview with AdWeek and noted he thought Samsung’s deal last year with Jay-Z might have influenced Apple to invest in pop culture through its purchase of Beats. Above, Kanye expands on that thought in an interview with Bloomberg during the Cannes Creativity Festival. In the interview, while explaining that he thinks Apple didn’t see the value in investing in pop culture before the Samsung deal with Jay-Z, Kanye drives the point home by noting Apple offered artists “extra space on the iTunes page” instead of paying them to perform at the iTunes Festival.
We already knew that Apple wasn’t paying artists to perform at its iTunes Festival, which arrived in the U.S. for the first time this year during the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Kanye previously called out Tim Cook during one of his usual onstage rants earlier this year, but we didn’t know Apple was offering artists prime real estate on the iTunes store in exchange for their performances.
Kanye’s full quote is below:
“It showed, now that Steve has passed… It showed a number one company the importance of connecting with culture. And I know you might of heard about this thing where I was on stage calling Tim Cook out and saying why do you have these guys performing at SXSW and you don’t want to pay them. You just want to give us extra space on the iTunes page and stuff. Meanwhile, Samsung realized, the whole point of what we’re saying, is that no you have to go and pay these guys. And that culture and creativity is worth something. The best thing about the fall of Blackberry and the rise at Apple is the win for creativity…
Noted marketing and branding genius Kanye West said in an Adweek interview published today that the recent deal between Apple and Beats Electronics only came about because Apple rival Samsung inked a deal with Jay Z. In Kanye’s view, this makes all the sense in the world.
According to West, who is a dedicated Apple fan and dislikes Samsung, the Korean phone maker earned substantial “cultural credibility” with the public when it signed a promotional deal with hip hop artist Jay Z last year. Oh, and that time Kanye joined Jay Z at a Samsung-funded concert a few months ago probably helped, too.
