Tidal Accused Of Inflating Beyoncé, Kanye Streaming Figures

– Tidal

Streaming service Tidal is being accused by a Norwegian newspaper of tampering with streaming data for exclusive 2016 album releases from Kanye West and Beyoncé, which would mean the artists were overly compensated at the expense of other artists.

The accusations come from Norway’s Dagens Næringsliv in alengthy report which has been in the making for more than a year (references to the report come from a translation summary via Music Business Worldwide). DN collaborated with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in its research, and the NTNU released its own report, which concluded, “There has in fact been a manipulation of the data at particular times. …  Our analysis also shows a significant number of system users were affected by the manipulation, which may exclude [an] external or user originated manipulation. As such the manipulation likely originates from within the streaming service itself.”

The smoking gun of DN’s report, which was used for NTNU’s research, was a hard drive acquired by the paper that reportedly contained tons of Tidal data and evidence of manipulation.

The accusations essentially state that, in a variety of ways, Tidal manipulated data to show records of streams that had never happened. The methods by which this was done, according to the NTNU, range from “simple duplication and insertion of fabricated playbacks of tracks,” to “more advanced (and difficult to detect) manipulation.”

The albums in question were West’s The Life Of Pablo¸ which was released exclusively for six weeks through Tidal in February 2016, and Lemonade, which was released by Beyoncé exclusively on Tidal in April 2016.

The initial reports of those album’s streaming figures showed that TLOP had 250 million streams in the first 10 days, and Lemonade had 306 million streams in the first 15 days. DN initially challenged the number of subscribers Tidal reported – 3 million –  leading MIDIA to estimate that the company actually only had 1 million subscribers when those two albums were released.

DN estimated that even with 3 million subscribers, the amount of streaming required for the reported figures seemed absurd, and cited interviews with Tidal subscribers who said their listening habits were not accurately reflected in the data on the obtained hard drive.

Any foul play with regard to streaming numbers would be scandalous because Music Business Worldwide reported that The Life Of Pablo earned approximately €2 million based on its Tidal streams, and Lemonade earned approximately $2.5 million. Payments for fraudulent streams would be cutting into the royalties of other artists, according to DN.

Tidal officials claim that the hard drive in question, which was used for the NTNU’s research, was doctored by a biased publication to appear incriminating, according to a statement provided to Rolling Stone.

“This is a smear campaign from a publication that once referred to our employee as an ‘Israeli Intelligence officer’ and our owner as a ‘crack dealer,’” a rep told the magazine. “We expect nothing less from them than this ridiculous story, lies, and falsehoods. The information was stolen and manipulated and we will fight these claims vicorously.”

It is worth noting that there is nothing in reports available to Pollstar that implicate either artist or Tidal’s celebrity owner Jay-Z in any effort to manipulate data. TIDAL’s holding company, Aspiro AB, was actually the target of a lawsuit from Jay-Z in 2016, as the Jiggaman claimed he was misled in terms of how many subscribers the service had when he purchased it.

Jay-Z and West were also sued by a fan who claimed they acted in bad faith when West tweeted, “My album will never never never be on Apple.” The album, The Life of Pablo, was made available on Spotify and Apple Music a little more than one month after its release.

Tidal lost its third CEO in two years in 2017, and the company is still dwarfed by Apple Music (which reported 38 million paid subscribers in March, according to Reuters) and industry heavyweight Spotify (which reported 71 million paid subscribers at the end of 2017).