Report claims Tidal grossly manipulated the streaming counts for Beyonce's 'Lemonade' and Kanye West's 'The Life of Pablo'

[Jordan Miller]

A Norwegian financial newspaper named Dagens Næringsliv (DN) obtained one of TIDAL's data hard drives, and if the contents on the drive are real, it revealed the streaming platform’s play-counts for two major albums from 2016 – Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo – were massively inflated.

DN says the hard drive contained ‘billions of rows of [internal TIDAL data]: times and song titles, user IDs and country codes.’

Tidal denies its real/accurate. 

It gets worse... a recent Norwegian Supreme Court Appeals Committee ruling says TIDAL has been an official suspect in a “serious data fraud investigation” by the Norwegian authorities since June 21 last year.

Just an FYI, Lemonade debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 653,000 with additional album-equivalent units, including 485,000 copies in its first week of sales.

So, how many copies did Lemonade really sell

Regardless, it's still an immaculate body of work.

 

 

Related:

 

[OnlyFacts]

And water is wet. I love bey, but it’s clear those streaming numbers were inflated. And once billboard starting investigating, all of her releases after had significantly less opening week numbers. You don’t go from 600k opening week for lemonade to 123k within two years with everything is love. That’s sketchy. That’s also probably why she hasn’t released an album in awhile.

[OnlyBeyonce]

2 minutes ago, OnlyFacts said:

And water is wet. I love bey, but it’s clear those streaming numbers were inflated. And once billboard starting investigating, all of her releases after had significantly less opening week numbers. You don’t go from 600k opening week for lemonade to 123k within two years with everything is love. That’s sketchy. That’s also probably why she hasn’t released an album in awhile.

Everything is love is pure trash 

[Gayseus911]

I just noticed that Beyonce never had a diamond single or album 

[Urbanney]

I’m not surprised, although I did activate my Tidal trial just to watch Lemonade. I also love The Life of Pablo. 

Not a good look though, especially when Tidal is owned by Jay-Z. There’s a reason it still hasn’t taken off like Spotify and Apple Music have, even with the exclusive streaming deals they had. Both Lemonade and TLOP are streaming everywhere now too. I do think it’s cool that Tidal offers lossless sound quality though.

[Urbanney]

From a Variety article 2 years ago about this:

Quote

It claimed that West’s album had been streamed 250 million times in its first 10 days of release in February of 2016, while claiming it had just 3 million subscribers — a claim that would have meant every subscriber played the album an average of eight times per day.

[RadicalOptimism]

Are we surprised their streaming company inflated her numbers?  investigate now Billboard  you live for ruining people’s legacies so here’s another chance 

[vzlafan]

this is not new, but come on Lemonade is iconic like it or not!

Bey is still iconic, formation iconic, on the run tours iconic.... 

 

Britney need to learn  a little from this gurl.

specially the phrase " Remixed, Reimagined and Still Iconic"

and when you see the show just changed the order of the songs and added 4 songs 

[migeal]

1 hour ago, JordanMiller said:

A Norwegian financial newspaper named Dagens Næringsliv (DN) obtained one of TIDAL's data hard drives, and if the contents on the drive are real, it revealed the streaming platform’s play-counts for two major albums from 2016 – Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo – were massively inflated.

DN says the hard drive contained ‘billions of rows of [internal TIDAL data]: times and song titles, user IDs and country codes.’

Tidal denies its real/accurate. 

It gets worse... a recent Norwegian Supreme Court Appeals Committee ruling says TIDAL has been an official suspect in a “serious data fraud investigation” by the Norwegian authorities since June 21 last year.

Just an FYI, Lemonade debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 653,000 with additional album-equivalent units, including 485,000 copies in its first week of sales.

So, how many copies did Lemonade really sell

Regardless, it's still an immaculate body of work.

 

 

Related:

 

was thinking bout this the other day how reliable is Spotify as well when it comes to album and single counts ...  Will we see a reverse of criteria where album sales is only based on physical album and full album purchase online and not streaming counts ..?

[none]

[MonAmour]

Shocking...……………...…............………...……......…...……......……......…...…......…...…......….

[Roxxy]

1 hour ago, OnlyBeyonce said:

Everything is love is pure trash

Not pure. I love NICE. 

[Body ache]

If DJ Bey goes to prison 

[Itscuzim31]

19 minutes ago, vzlafan said:

this is not new, but come on Lemonade is iconic like it or not!

Bey is still iconic, formation iconic, on the run tours iconic.... 

 

Britney need to learn  a little from this gurl.

specially the phrase " Remixed, Reimagined and Still Iconic"

and when you see the show just changed the order of the songs and added 4 songs 

I’d rather her not learn from someone who had to lie and fake her way to the top. Britney always overshadowed Beyoncé up until she got new management and started paying media outlets (and apparently her and her husbands streaming platform) to make her seem more popular than she actually is. 
 

britney walks around stage blatantly lip syncing and people still lose their minds and kick started a whole new era of Vegas entertainment. THAT is star power. THAT is being an Icon. Nala can learn a lot from Brit. 

[vzlafan]

2 hours ago, Itscuzim31 said:

I’d rather her not learn from someone who had to lie and fake her way to the top. Britney always overshadowed Beyoncé up until she got new management and started paying media outlets (and apparently her and her husbands streaming platform) to make her seem more popular than she actually is. 
 

britney walks around stage blatantly lip syncing and people still lose their minds and kick started a whole new era of Vegas entertainment. THAT is star power. THAT is being an Icon. Nala can learn a lot from Brit. 

get a good  media management is not a crime. and the product is good. the bands of beyonce are another level, britney could be iconic but she could reach more with a better management

 

and about manipulation of the lists.

for me its better a great media campaign than a  manipulation of list is from forever, the ***  prostitation in the industry for positioning , just saw hollywood on netflix the same apply for music industry.

[Angels970]

Why I’m not surprised ? 
Since Tidal was created I knew this 
 

 

[Itachi]

we all know Jay-Z accounts for half of Beyoncé's sales anyway.

Love Drought and All Night are still my jams doe

[PokemonSpears]

34 minutes ago, vzlafan said:

Britney need to learn  a little from this gurl.

yeah, some inflated streams would be nice for B10

[Angels970]

34 minutes ago, vzlafan said:

 

 

Britney need to learn  a little from this gurl.

 

learn what? cheating and media overhyped  without a real fan base ? 

[ThisMeowBiteback]

I get that they cheated, but even without the cheating numbers from streaming she still sold nearly 500k with sales alone so it still would have went to number 1 . I’m not surprised by it tho, Beyonce is one of the most fraudulent artists there is. She has stolen people work, writing credit, and visuals to name a few. I don’t know who’s worse her or Kylie Jenner