Pirates Sail On Frank’s Ocean

In news that will surprise exactly no one following the pattern of exclusives on streaming platforms,Frank Ocean’s second LP ‘Blonde’ has hit the top of the piracy charts.

According to Music Business Worldwide, the widely acclaimed album has been downloaded 753,849 times in the first five days of release from 20th-25th August.

As previously reported, Ocean released the LP exclusively through Apple Music and it remains unavailable on competitor platforms such as Spotify.

The data was provided by content protection, data-analytics and ‘piracy audience reconnection’ specialist MUSO and includes data from torrents alongside cyber-lockers and direct downloads. It doesn’t include unauthorised streams of Ocean’s album, with such activity now accounting for over 35% of all piracy.

If this all sounds horribly familiar, Gen readers may remember a very similar effect created byKanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ earlier in the year. There were a staggering 500,000 illegal torrents of the (then) Tidal exclusive in the first 24 hours of release.