It is an undeniable fact that Kanye West’s long-awaited new album, Vultures, is not on Spotify – unless it is – instead releasing on Apple Music – except when it’s not.
As with any story about Ye, this is exhausting. The 46-year-old performer, whose feet remain planted squarely at the crossroads of incomparable talent and the oblivious instability of a Tim Robinson character, finally released Vultures 1 on Feb. 10, 2024. A collaboration with Ty Dolla Sign, it represented West’s first studio album since 2021’s Donna, and the first in a series of productions under the Vultures title, with more entries expected to drop throughout the year. It was, according to early social media reactions, one of Kanye’s greatest works yet. It was also, save for a solitary single, unavailable on Spotify on the morning of February 10.
Vulture 1‘s initial absence on Spotify, explained
The conspicuous absence – along with a nail-biting 20 minutes in which Apple Music removed the Vultures 1 from the digital storefront before hastily deciding to keep making money – didn’t go unnoticed by fans, who were quick to blame cancel culture and the woke mafia for the fact that they could only listen to West’s new album on most streaming platforms, not all of them. It was, to their minds, a classic case of liberal tech CEOs getting cold feet about an artist, just because he did this and this and this and this and this and plus these seven things and told Alex Jones that he thought Hitler was neat. And oh, this.
Well, good news for people who like Ye and, by the transitive property, that stuff from the last paragraph: It appears that Vultures 1 isn’t missing from Spotify so much as it is running late. In a story posted to West’s Instagram, he assured fans that the album would be available on Spotify in the coming days. Then, like magic, the album appeared, ensuring that Ye’s 65 million monthly listeners wouldn’t have to experience the pain of switching from one app to another app.
Much to the frustration of the conspiracy-minded, this fits with Spotify’s past reluctance to delist West’s work. Previous requests from the public to limit the artist’s reach due to his inflammatory rhetoric and panache for antisemitism have been met with stubborn “nahs” from the streaming service, on account of how money is fun and you can buy stuff with it. The company’s CEO did label West’s comments “awful,” though, so it’s a mixed bag of news, all told.
For any fans still unable, for whatever reason, to stream to Vultures 1 on Spotify, you can still listen to any of West’s previous albums on the platform. Alternatively, you can listen to music by Ozzy Osbourne, who claims that West sampled his work on Vultures after being specifically asked not to, or Taylor Swift, who is mentioned in the new album in an ode to the rocky history she shares with Kanye.
