Kanye West's first independent album earned over $1 million in its first week

In September 2020, Kanye West launched a series of “NEW RECORDING GUIDES AND PUBLISHING DEALS” on Twitter, the app now known as X. He called for artist-friendly revenue splits — 80% for the musician — and contracts that are easy to understand. “The artist owns the copyright to the recordings and songs,” West suggested, “and leases them to the record label/publisher for a limited period of time.”

His new album Vultures 1, a full-length collaboration with singer Ty Dolla $ign, arrives with even fewer strings — it has no label partner, just a distribution company (Label Engine) to ensure the music's presence on streaming services. This arrangement outside the major label system means West and Ty Dolla $ign will likely take home even more than the 80% the rapper tweeted in 2020. Although Label Engine advertises it Customers receive 82.5% of revenue, stars like West almost certainly have the power to push that number significantly higher.

Advertising sign estimates that Vultures 1, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, earned just over $1 million in its opening week in the United States, mostly from streaming (about $892,000 from nearly 169 million on-demand streams) plus a little extra from sales (approx. $145,000). If West and Ty Dolla $ign give up 5% for distribution — which can be high — they get about $986,000. (More so when you factor in global streams and posts.)

Contrasted with the situation West faced early in his career in the major label system: Pictures of old contracts tweeted in 2020 that when he did Dropping out of college, earned 14% royalties on albums sold in the US. As is typical in a royalties agreement, West's old contract notes that “no royalties shall be due and payable … until all advances are recouped.” This compensation comes from an artist's share, meaning the meager 14% must do all the heavy lifting to earn the advances back.

In a hypothetical example, if West entered into this deal and had just $1 million in recoverable expenses (such as an advance) associated with an album—which would be low for him, historically speaking—this release should yield more than $7 million in total sales income to recover and start monetizing his music in the future. (In this simple hypothetical, an artist generates income only through sales, not sync or other ancillary sources, and the royalty rate does not increase when an artist reaches certain sales thresholds.)

To generate approximately $1 million in royalties for its creators, such as Vultures 1 did for West and Ty Dolla $ign in just one week, the album stuck in a 14% royalty deal should then earn an additional $7 million in total sales revenue. Translated into on-demand streams, that would mean about 1.3 billion more games.

Since West is no longer associated with a major company, her commercial success Vultures 1 has been praised on social media as an important moment for the independent sector. But while calling the rapper independent is technically accurate — he's not working with a major label — it's also misleading. Imagine if LeBron James retired and people started describing him as an amateur basketball player because he was no longer on an NBA roster.

The term independent gets thrown around a lot these days. Gamma boss Larry Jackson recently called Usher “the first independent artist to ever play the Super Bowl.” (Usher, by the way, has the No. 2 album in the country with I'm coming home.)

Both West and Usher built their superstar careers within the major label system, however. They were thrown lavish budgets to make their albums. And they benefited from the full weight of the promotional power of the record companies at a time when those companies had great influence over what the public listened to.

In West's case, images of recording deals he tweeted 2020 showed that Universal Music Group ordered over $8 million in advance for Yeezus, along with another $4 million for recording and clearing samples. The contract photos also showed that Universal was ready to pay $3 million down payment and an additional $3 million for recording and clearances for The Life of Pablo. UMG has also poured money into radio marketing and promotion over the years. It's hard to imagine West reaching the level of cultural ubiquity he achieved without that investment from the bigwigs.

And even if the rapper is enjoying a bigger share of the profits from his music these days, the real money may be coming to him outside of the music industry: West recently he claimed earned more than $19 million in clothing sales in a single day.