Jay Z And Tidal Accused Of Drastically Fudging Subscriber Numbers

We’ll spare you the jokes about the number of problems he has or the thrones he ought to be watching, but suffice to say, Jay Z today finds his streaming service Tidal accused of drastically inflating its subscriber count.
A report published in Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv and then picked up by various international sources has accused the company of over-reporting numbers to make it seem more successful than it is.  

The report pointed to a Tweet from September 2015 in which the man otherwise known as Shawn Carter claimed that “Tidal is platinum”, adding “1,000,000 people and counting.”
To be fair, those statements are a little slippery – “Tidal is platinum” could be a simile, like “Tidal’s as good as gold, mate”, and the “1,000,000 people” mentioned could be those who tuned in to the season premiere of HBO‘s Girls in 2014.
Whatever the case may be, Dagens Næringsliv claim that an internal report from around that time contradicts these figures, showing only 830,000 subscribers to the service.
The newspaper claims that this number, too, may be inaccurate, as payments that Tidal made to record labels over the relevant period indicate a subscriber count of more like 350,000.
They also point to a March 2016 interview with The Verge, in which Tidal executives claimed that the service was sitting pretty at three million subscribers. 
Internal reports at that time allegedly showed 1.2 million subscribers, but Dagens Næringsliv claim that, when they analysed payments made to record labels at that time, figures indicate a number closer to 850,000.
Neither Jay Z nor Tidal have commented on the report. 

Photo: Larry Busacca / Getty.

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