4 votes

TIDAL accused of deliberatly faking streaming numbers

4 comments

  1. [2]
    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link
    TIDAL still being is business is the real shocker for me. I remember reading last year they had barely 6 months of funding left even after the Sprint investment and I don't know a single person...

    TIDAL still being is business is the real shocker for me. I remember reading last year they had barely 6 months of funding left even after the Sprint investment and I don't know a single person who uses it, even amongst my hiphophead friends; They only signed up for the free month to get access to the exclusives and then canceled before the time ran out.

    2 votes
    1. Amarok
      Link Parent
      When we did last year's bestof I used Soundiiz (a part of Tidal) to export the playlists from Spotify to every other music service that would take them - it even got youtube at like 95% matching....

      When we did last year's bestof I used Soundiiz (a part of Tidal) to export the playlists from Spotify to every other music service that would take them - it even got youtube at like 95% matching. Signed up for some free trials on the other services that required actual paying accounts to make playlists. While Soundiiz worked just fine (basically cron for synching libraries/playlists across services) the Tidal service and client itself was definitely the worst of the bunch. I felt like I was using a crummy web interface stuffed into a desktop app.

      3 votes
  2. [2]
    Deimos
    Link
    Interesting. I was expecting this to be a pretty vague "the numbers don't make sense" type of accusation, but this seems to have some pretty serious evidence and investigations behind it. What...

    Interesting. I was expecting this to be a pretty vague "the numbers don't make sense" type of accusation, but this seems to have some pretty serious evidence and investigations behind it.

    What would the motivation for doing this have been, since they did still have to pay royalties? Trying to make it seem like they're a major platform, to get access to more exclusive releases?

    2 votes
    1. cfabbro
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Kanye is a partial owner of TIDAL (as is Beyoncé who they have also been accused of inflated numbers for) so I doubt the royalties are that much of a factor since they probably have preferential...

      Kanye is a partial owner of TIDAL (as is Beyoncé who they have also been accused of inflated numbers for) so I doubt the royalties are that much of a factor since they probably have preferential royalty rates for both of them.

      And why would they lie? Well, by all accounts they are hemorrhaging money so inflating numbers is probably an attempt to appear more successful than they really are in order draw in more investors. I saw an article last year about how even with Sprint buying 33% of the company for $200M earlier in the year, it was estimated they only had six months of working capital remaining.

      2 votes