Universal Music has a bone to pick with Jay Z‘s Tidal streaming service…and it’s over its handling of Rihanna‘s latest album ‘ANTI.’
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Rihanna calls Roc Nation, Tidal’s sister company, her management and label home. As fans already know, Roc falls under the Universal Music Group’s umbrella making the ‘Thug in my Life‘ star one of their more bankable entertainers.
Alas, the label are deeply unhappy with Tidal’s handling of her new LP and furious that it claimed it was to blame for its leaking last week.
Yes, representatives from the streaming company claimed the album leaked because “of a system error caused by Universal Music Group” and that “the error was not something Tidal caused.”
Now, after fans learned of the project’s modest sales, a perturbed Universal executive (who asked to remain anonymous) made his way to Billboard HQ and told them this…
This whole thing is absurd, we would have taken responsibility if it were our error. Instead of having their flack flail around trying to revise their own media spin, maybe they should just focus on serving Rihanna — that’s what we’re focused on.
Tidal is yet to respond.
Unfortunately, it seems the ongoing drama surrounding the album is unlikely to fade away anytime soon as all parties now find themselves faced with saving the project from commercial ruin..
As it stands, the release is predicted to move a little over 95,000 units in its opening week and will not see Samsung’s purchase of an undisclosed number of its digital copies aid it on its chart journey.
If the project does sell as many units as industry experts believe it will it’s set to deliver one of the lowest opening week numbers to be delivered by a major female Pop artist of Rihanna‘s elk in quite some time moving half as many units as Nicki Minaj‘s ‘The Pinkprint’ and three times less than Beyonce‘s lowest selling album ‘4.’
Fortunately, all isn’t lost.
For its lead single ‘Work’ is currently heating up the Billboard Hot 100 with help from its featured artist Drake as critics continue to shower praise on the album track ‘Kiss it Better.’
Hit this link for more details ‘Work’s impressive chart debut.
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