Tidal Accused of Inflating Streaming Numbers

gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
The streaming service Tidal, owned by hiphop artist Jay-Z, is accused of falsifying data for hundreds of millions of streams. How many times did Tidal subscribers listen to Beyoncé and Kanye West? That’s the big question.

Tidal-Jay-Z.jpg


Read: Tidal Accused of Inflating Streaming Numbers
 
S

sterling shoote

Audioholic Field Marshall
I thought artists got paid based on plays of their material. Seems to me therefore that inflating plays would be dumb thing for Tidal to do.
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
My guess is that they inflating their library size as well
 
Forsooth

Forsooth

Audioholic
Well now, take the over inflated numbers away what's left, Actual talent.
If the reports prove to be correct, take the inflated numbers away and you have remaining a doubtful business model.
 
Last edited:

TechHDS

Audioholic General
Hip-Hop, Rap, POP, and a few other categories of music has Always been over inflated. Although there are a few exceptions,
Very talented artist or actually gifted performers are very few and very far between. Some would say a one in a million voice comes around once a decade or so. My point on Genes, Thread it isn't surprising that the numbers are overinflated for lack of "Actual talent". Pun was intended for my previous post. The music industry has always been a cut-throat kind of business. Especially with pop and rap,hip hop. Didn't Taylor Swift and Katy Perry just make up? Them two been throwing pie in each other face for a long time. Point is the money is the bottom line with the music industry many will stop at nothing or do anything to inflate their bank accounts. Morals has never been one of the top priorities with music Industries.
 
everettT

everettT

Audioholic Spartan
Nothing like paying artists for fictional plays and then file bankruptcy if it goes sideways. Racketeering?
 
hk2000

hk2000

Junior Audioholic
I wouldn't listen to those "artists" for free- even if Tidal was going to transport them to my living room for a live performance, I wouldn't want to listen.
Tidal is overpriced in my opinion. Is it really worth that much more to go from 320k for $9.99 via Spotify to Tidal's $19.99? Not to me!
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
IMO, that's the least of their worries. They haven't paid their debt since Oct. 2017... If you 're on their service, I'd say drop them fast.
 
slipperybidness

slipperybidness

Audioholic Warlord
To be fair, this "inflated popularity" isn't really new. That is pretty much the de facto ClearChannel business strategy!

"This song is popular b/c we play it every hour on the radio"
"We'll tell you what's popular by playing it on the radio every hour"

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
KenM10759

KenM10759

Audioholic Samurai
To answer the question of high many times have I listened to Beyoncé's "Lemonade" album, ZERO.

I like a wide range of music, and some of it is considered to be "pop" (popular?) music. No interest in that at all. Yes, I have tried listening to some parts of every song. Nothing about it appealed to me.
 
C

cutedaddy

Audioholic Intern
Why is it so unlikely someone would loop a certain song they like? I regularly play music all day or all night, say 12-16 hrs. in a row, and sometimes i have a song on 'repeat' and forget about it. I don't see, with millions of listeners, how that would be such an unlikely event. Quite the opposite: seems rather unlikely for that not to happen regularly!
 
Forsooth

Forsooth

Audioholic
Lots of Tidal news lately...nothing good, e.g., Tidal Investigating 'Potential Data Breach' After Reports of Late Royalty Payments and Inflated Streams.
 
slipperybidness

slipperybidness

Audioholic Warlord
Why is it so unlikely someone would loop a certain song they like? I regularly play music all day or all night, say 12-16 hrs. in a row, and sometimes i have a song on 'repeat' and forget about it. I don't see, with millions of listeners, how that would be such an unlikely event. Quite the opposite: seems rather unlikely for that not to happen regularly!
Did you read the article, or no?

Did you see this item:
An announcement by Tidal in 2017 claimed that listeners streamed The Life of Pablo 250 million times during the album’s first 10 days of availability. In order for that to be true, every one of Tidal’s claimed 3 million subscribers must have listened to the album more than 8 times a day during that period.

Simple math suggests that this claim is highly unlikely to be true.
 
KenM10759

KenM10759

Audioholic Samurai
It wouldn't surprise me if the @DOJ has an open investigation.
I don't know if that would happen. They're not a US-based company, and I think the bulk of subscriptions are outside the US, collectively.
 

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