JAY-Z’s TIDAL streaming app is being accused of “massively” falsifying streaming plays of albums by his wife Beyonce and rap producer Kanye West.
According to a report by a Norwegian newspaper, TIDAL reportedly falsified over 320 million plays of Beyonce’s Lemonade and Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo.
TIDAL denied the claims, calling the report a “smear campaign.”
According to Music Business Worldwide, reporters from Dagens Naeringsliv obtained a hard drive that allegedly contained manipulated TIDAL streaming data.
The reporters took the hard drive to Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Center for Cyber and Information Security (CCIS), for analysis.
DN reports the study found over 320 million falsified plays of Lemonade and TLOP. One example was a user who played TLOP tracks 96 times, including 54 times in the middle of the night.
In 2016, TIDAL announced that TLOP was streamed 250 million times in its first 10 days of release.
And in May 2016, The New York Times reported that Beyoncé’s album, which dropped 2 weeks earlier, received 306 million global streams.
TIDAL released a statement on Wednesday denying the allegations:
“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.”
Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images
