While many at TIDAL were reportedly enjoying the taste of massive success thanks to Beyonce‘s megahit album, ‘Lemonade,’ investigative reporters have begun spilling another choice beverage.
Asserting the media giant massively inflated the reported streaming figures of Bey’s sixth opus and Kanye West‘s ‘Life of Pablo’ project to the tune of over 300 million, the shocking allegations also suggest the overstatement created huge royalty payouts for the listed stars and TIDAL.
Naming Jay Z as one of the masterminds behind the scheme, as the story continues to pick up heat the leaders at TIDAL have had enough! Look inside for their response to the hoopla:
Tidal has been accused of intentionally falsifying streaming numbers for Beyonce’s “Lemonade” and Kanye West’s “Life of Pablo” albums and consequently paying inflated royalties to the artists’ labels, in a report by Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (via Music Business Worldwide).
Tidal, which has rarely shared its data publicly, had a streaming exclusive on West’s album for its first six weeks of release and continues to be the exclusive streamer for Beyonce’s album. It claimed that West’s album had been streamed 250 million times in its first 10 days of release in February of 2016, while claiming it had just 3 million subscribers — a claim that would have meant every subscriber played the album an average of eight times per day; and that Beyonce’s album was streamed 306 million times in its first 15 days of release in April of 2016.
These claims led the Norwegian paper to investigate the service’s numbers and report that it was intentionally inflating its subscriber count…
Tidal’s response?
“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.’ 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 vigorously.”