Kanye West Reportedly Leaves TIDAL,

TMZ reported yesterday was that Kanye is leaving TIDAL over a financial dispute. Kanye’s lawyer claims he is owed $3 million for attracting more than one million subscribers to the service with last year’s The Life of Pablo (which was initially a TIDAL exclusive), in addition to reimbursements for music videos. As a result, Kanye has terminated his contract with TIDAL.

TIDAL, however, claim that Kanye didn’t deliver the videos in accordance with the contract. The streaming service believe their exclusive contract with Kanye remains in tact and are ready to sue him if he strikes a deal with a rival company — but here’s the twist: TMZ later reported that Kanye is done with exclusive album releases altogether.

To avoid any further conflict with TIDAL — and to make his music available to as large an audience as possible — Kanye’s future output will be available on all platforms, not just one. “This shit got me tight, yo. Every time I perform [‘Pop Style’] I think about this shit. I think about the politics and the bullshit. I think about how hard I go…for music, for art, for y’all, for the fans, how hard we go,” Kanye said during his Saint Pablo tour last year.

Kanye’s decision to leave TIDAL — and the streaming game as a whole — predates the release of JAY-Z’s 4:44album, on which he has a few not-so-subliminal words for Mr. West. But if Kanye said Watch The Throne 2 will never happen “because of some TIDAL/Apple bullshit,” it doesn’t look any likelier now that he’s out of the race.