You can question a lot of things about Kanye West—his Twitter conduct, his endless perfectionism, his strange obsession with becoming a fashion mogul or the CEO of The Gap—but there’s one fact about the man that’s pretty much impossible to deny: When he really wants to, dude can put some numbers on the board.
Tidal has just released the streaming data for West’s latest album, the endlessly tinkered-with The Life Of Pablo, and the totals are impressive: 250 million streams in the album’s first 10 days on the service, numbers that would have placed it at the top of Billboard’s album rankings if Tidal had released the figures at the time. (West reportedly didn’t want the album to get ranked until it was “officially done.”)
Meanwhile, the artist reminded his critics of the general rule that, for every five or so implausible brags he makes, one will be a cold-hard fact: Tidal posted record subscriber growth in recent months, presumably on the strength of Pablo, and similarly promoted albums like Rihanna’s recently released Anti. The service just pushed past 3 million total subscribers, with nearly half of those paying for the company’s premium service. That’s still way, way less than the 30 million Spotify can claim, but it’s a testament to the fact that West can occasionally back up his antics with unquestionable economic force.