Looks like Tidal has manipulated the numbers of Kanye and Beyonce..

[CS70]

Tidal is based in Oslo, and the local version of the wall street journal ("Dagens Næringsliv", Today's Business") has obtained streaming numbers from a source and made a deep research. The result of which is article stating that both Beyonce and Kanye West streaming numbers have been artificially inflated, producing quite large payouts for both. There should be 320 million false streams (injected into 1.7 million real users). The research includes interviews with a sample of customers who have large numbers of streams reported in their name, but which didn't recognize at all their actual activity and musical tastes in the logs they were presented.

Obviously Tidal denies. Haven't read the original article, will try and find it.

[Guest]

This doesn't surprise me. I have worked with arts companies and they are run by not-very-good administrators, yet they manipulate the figures, success rate and feedback. A company like Tidal, which almost certainly has skilled administrators, would no doubt be far more successful at this sort of thing.

[The Korff]

Tidal have responded:

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.

[CS70]

Tidal have responded:

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.

Yes, read that. Thing is, the publication is super-legit, not a two bits web outlet, they did a pretty through job researching piece and most importantly,why should they want to smear Tidal? There is zero advantage for them in doing so. It’s not like they’d sell more copies.. the newspaper is in Norwegian.

I Think Tidal needs to be way more precise than a vague denial in responding..

[CS70]

Btw, the original piece is avaliable for free at https://www.dn.no/staticprojects/specia ... mmekuppet/

One has to register via email, and of course it's in Norwegian. It's quite compelling.

[CS70]

The local PRO has now sued Tidal over this. Gonna be interesting to see what happens.

[Drew Stephenson]

I saw that Future of Music Coalition had picked up on this but they were referring to the same source as your initial report so I didn't have much to add to the conversation.