The weird Kanye 'Donda' Apple Music listening party broke a streaming record

Kanye West on iPhone
Kanye West on iPhone (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Apple Music broke its streaming record with that crazy Kanye stream last week.
  • A new report says Kanye almost doubled the previous record.

Apple Music's live stream of that weird Kanye West Donda situation last week seems to have broken a record — and it wasn't for the latest starting event ever. According to a new report, 3.3 million people watched the live stream of the event.

If accurate, that number eclipses the previous record of 1.8 million people — a record that was gained by Gucci Mane and Jeezy. Or so TMZ reports at least.

Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ ... Ye's album event this past week at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta broke the Apple Music Global Livestream record ... with 3.3 million viewers who tuned in on their screens.That's a heck of a lot more than the previous record, we're told, which was set by Gucci Mane and Jeezy in their highly-anticipated Verzuz battle earlier last year -- at a reported 1.8 million viewers. Kanye practically doubled the number as a solo act!

The Donda event was a weird one from minute one, with Kanye turning up late and then the album being a no-show once the stream came to an end. It's now said to be coming on August 6 though, so we at least have some hope that it is coming.

It isn't expected that the new album will be an Apple Music exclusive, but the live stream of the full set list was. That stream isn't available for people to watch on-demand either, so people who weren't one of those 3.3 million watching live are now out of luck.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.