Jay Z's Music Streaming Service Tidal Has Been Accused of Lying About its User Numbers

Tidal, the music streaming service owned by rapper Jay Z and a few well-known musicians, has been accused of inflating its user numbers to appear more successful than it actually is.

A report published in Norwegian by the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv says that Tidal has over-reported its subscriber numbers on at least two occasions.

The report alleges that while Jay Z tweeted in September 2015 that Tidal had "1,000,000 people and counting," his streaming service actually had 830,000 subscribers, according to internal reports.

Dagens Næringsliv says Tidal's internal report may have even overstated the subscriber number. It says that payments made to record labels at that time indicated that the service had around 350,000 subscribers.
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The report also highlights another time when it alleges that Tidal's public user numbers misaligned with its internal figures. It said in a press release on March 30 that it had grown to 3 million paying subscribers, up from 900,000 in June 2015. But Dagens Næringsliv says that in April, a month after Tidal claimed to have 3 million subscribers, its internal reports showed 1.2 million subscribers. And payments to record labels indicated that it had 850,000 subscribers.

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