Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Jay-Z's Tidal Accused of Faking Kanye West, Beyonce Streaming Numbers (qz.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the numbers-don't-lie dept.

Subscription music service Tidal has been accused of faking the streaming numbers for Kanye West and Beyonce. "Kanye West's 'The Life of Pablo,' which was the first album to go platinum primarily from streaming, and Beyonce's platinum record 'Lemonade' were released exclusively on Tidal for periods in 2016," reports Quartz. "By placing their albums on the fledgling platform, which was relaunched in 2015, both artists risked losing big paychecks." From the report: West's album was said to have been streamed 250 million times in the first 10 days on the service. And Beyonce's record was reportedly played 306 million times in 15 days. While it's not hard to believe Bey and Yeezy could hit those numbers, they rang false to some, as Tidal said it had 3 million members then. However, according to an in-depth investigation by Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv (DN), Tidal has reportedly manipulated those streaming numbers, to potentially make the company appear more profitable or increase royalty payments to the artists at the expense of others on the service. This is something Tidal vigorously denies and says the DN report is part of a "smear campaign."

The DN's report investigated streaming numbers since 2017, when it reportedly obtained a hard drive of internal Tidal data with more than 1.5 billion of rows of user play logs. Those logs were from two periods -- from late January to early March, and mid April to early May -- totaling 65 days in 2016. Its reporters tracked down subscribers from the logs, and presented them with their apparent listening history, which the users said didn't add up. "We have through advanced statistical analysis determined that there has in fact been a manipulation of the data at particular times. The manipulation appears targeted towards a very specific set of track IDs, related to two distinct albums," found the researchers (pdf) at NTNU's Center for Cyber and Information Security. "The manipulation likely originates from within the streaming service itself."

6 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. I like the way Dagens Naeringsliv thinks by ruddk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They have some dragon reporting power there.
    But seriously, are we just going to ignore that they got all that user data?

    --
    L'Idiot
    1. Re:I like the way Dagens Naeringsliv thinks by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can see why Tidal would argue this as one of their competitors on "HiRes" streaming and music is the Norwegian 2L.

      What does that have to do with the independent newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv? There's no incentive for DN to favour either service. If anything, it would be even more of a scoop for them if they could dig dirt on a Norwegian service.

  2. Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With 3 million users, every single one would have streamed 'Lemonade" 102 times in 15 days.

    I am going to go with no.

    1. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      102 times in 15 days. I am going to go with no.

      Clearly you have never met a teenager.

  3. Numbers are very suspect by Ksevio · · Score: 4, Informative

    So they claim that every single user of their site streamed the albums 10 times a day for two weeks straight, as well as watching the hour long HBO show 3 times? Maybe "songs from the album" means streaming an album of 10 songs counts as 10 streams, but still, that's a bit far fetched

  4. Newspapers reputation = stellar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dagens Næringsliv is famous in Norway for it's deep digging journalism. I'd be extremely surprised if their conclusions are wrong.