
Tidal Accused of Falsifying Beyonce and Kanye West Streaming Numbers - spking
http://variety.com/2018/biz/news/jay-z-tidal-accused-of-falsifying-beyonce-and-kanye-west-streaming-numbers-1202804222/
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teachrdan
FTA: _Tidal, which has rarely shared its data publicly, had a streaming
exclusive on West’s album for its first six weeks of release and continues to
be the exclusive streamer for Beyonce’s album. 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; and that Beyonce’s album was streamed 306 million times in its
first 15 days of release in April of 2016._

Does anyone believe those numbers on face?

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citricsquid
As I understand it the 250,000,000 number refers to total streams of all
tracks on the album[1], it does not refer to plays of the _entire_ album, so
the article is wrong. The album is 20 tracks which means we're looking at 12.5
million streams per track. There were (and still are) many offers for a free
Tidal trial, which were shared all over the internet at the time the album
became available, so I do think it's possible that Tidal could have had those
numbers. Paying subscribers? No, but users? You could sign up to Tidal for
free, and Kanye albums are very highly anticipated... Is it reasonable to
expect ~3 million people to each listen to an album ~4 times through on
average? I certainly listened to it _at least_ a dozen times in the first 2
weeks and know many friends who did the same.

For comparison Taylor Swift's album Reputation did ~500,000,000 streams in the
first few weeks after it launched, granted that was available on all services
and not just Tidal: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-
arts-42564917](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42564917)

I'm a little suspicious of the numbers, given Taylor Swift has a wider appeal
than Kanye and her album was on _all_ services but you could sign up for Tidal
for free _and_ the article is clearly wrong when it says "a claim that would
have meant every subscriber played the album an average of eight times per
day" so I'm inclined to say Tidal are telling the truth because if they did
inflate the numbers then they would not have needed to inflate them from, say,
25 million to 250 million which is what the report seems to suggest.

[1] See the BBC Taylor Swift article for an example of how the figures are
calculated

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jsgo
At this stage, I think as far as for metrics of this nature, it is time to
stop quantifying album streams and focus on streams of tracks within the
albums (in the example you gave, someone streaming the entire album should
count 20x). I, myself, still buy albums in full, but I think there's a
significant number of people who go for singles at this stage. Streaming,
probably just as much of a divide.

To focus at the track level is about the only way to quantify for both cases.

~~~
okmokmz
>it is time to stop quantifying album streams and focus on streams of tracks
within the albums

They already do this (or at least the RIAA does)

>In the new structure, 150 streams of a song equals one paid download, and ten
paid downloads equates to an album download. So, an artist’s music will have
to be streamed on any of the approved, included services 1,500 times for an
album “sale” to be counted. [1]

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/02/13/now-
tha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/02/13/now-that-
streaming-can-make-a-song-platinum-what-counts-and-what-doesnt/#41f205d617ef)

~~~
jsgo
> ten paid downloads equates to an album download.

But it gets fuzzy here. If the album has 10 tracks, it makes sense, but for
ones with less than that or more than that, it doesn't hash out.

I'm just saying for these kind of metrics they should, now, stick to the track
level but group them by album (ie Taylor Swift would have x streams/downloads
from 1989 and y streams/downloads from Reputation).

Albums in these metrics just muddies the water too much and doesn't really
quantify for those who go for singles. Say an artist releases a really, really
popular song on a terrible album that no one buys/streams. That song performs
well, lots of streams and lots of downloads or buys. Should the album be
considered a hit if it is just a single track on it that performed well? Even
if no one, or relatively few, streamed or bought the album proper?

~~~
simlevesque
> for ones with [...] more than that, it doesn't hash out.

Chris Brown released an album last year exploiting this fact. He released a
fourty track double album. If that album is streamed in it's entirety a
thousand times, he gets four sales on the charts. Many hiphop act did the same
last year. The last Migos album had 24 songs and their label had just released
a 30 songs compilation 2 months prior. Drake's last project was dubbed a
'playlist' and had 22 songs.

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frou_dh
ANECDOTE: I've never heard anyone mention Tidal in real life even once.

~~~
overcast
A lot of the draw for Tidal is the lossless streams. That is a big deal for
audiophile people, which you and your friends are not a part of.

~~~
dfaigonio
It's a big draw for clueless people. It would take Superman to tell the
difference between lossless audio and a modern codec with a decent bitrate. I
would be surprised if you can prove that a single person has ever done so on
an ABX test.

The only reason to use lossless audio is for archival. Obviously streams are
useless for that.

~~~
qwerty_0010
I know 100% that you're wrong, but I don't blame you for making that
statement.

The problem with "can't hear the difference" statements is that they're highly
dependent on the system you're listening to. The vast majority of systems are
not resolving to a degree that there is an audible difference between AAC or a
lossless format.

On my system, there is a profound difference between FLAC (at any bitrate) and
higher rate DSD. Is DSD magically better? Not necessarily, but in my case my
DAC bypasses its internal filtering for DSD playback, which means I can move
the interpolation filter over to my CPU, which, running at 4GHz, is better at
it than a (SOTA) DAC chip running at a few MHz.

It's a complicated topic, and the only people I personally discuss it with are
professional audio engineers or serious hobbyists. No one else cares.

On topic, TIDAL is great in the sense that it's not US-centric for billing
(just take my money please) and streams lossless. It's like a CD store for
~$20 a month (the max they'll take from me). I'd gladly pay a lot more and
given the economics of it I'm worried it will go out of business at some
point.

If you're interested in the topic you can check out the Roon community,
"minimum vs linear phase interpolation filters", "DSD upsampling" or check out
the work of Ted Smith (MIT / software guy turned DAC designer).

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kevin_thibedeau
You've got a 1-bit DAC at the end of the chain regardless. Making it sound
"better" by filtering in a 4GHz processor is golden ear nonsense.

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piker
Can someone explain a motive for this? If Jay-Z owns the service, and the
service pays royalties to artists streamed on it, is this just Jay-Z
transferring some wealth to his wife and friend?

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evgen
Tidal exists to be sold to some other media company or online service so that
Jay-Z can finally make billionaire status. I am sure seeing Dr. Dre up there
on those lists motivates him more than anything else in the world at the
moment...

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rainbowmverse
Tidal was one of the sites I submitted music to last time I tried DistroKid.
They took 6 months to get it up (vs the 1-7 days for every other store), and
it had worse results than even the already weak results of the others.

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jedimastert
That's really weird. I just submitted my first album to DistroKid about 4
hours ago and it's already up. Waaaaay quicker than I thought it was going to
be.

Then again, it might be a genre thing. Mine is a chill piano album I put under
"Jazz"

~~~
rainbowmverse
I meant Tidal specifically. DistroKid isn't the problem. I'm sure they send it
to the store almost instantly.

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tomc1985
It is foolish to trust Tidal's numbers... they're privately-owned by artists
in a genre known for fictionalized details

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colecut
"Falsifying" is a strong term... They probably just released some alternative
stats

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wehadfun
I plan to switch to Tidal. They pay artist the most. Only the top, top artist
are making money on Spotify. I like to listen to indie/small label bands. I
don't buy albums, go to concerts. Tidal seems to be the best way to support
these artist.

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rconti
I'm sorry, but this reads like astroturfing. I don't think it is, but it 100%
feels that way.

And, from what I can see, Tidal is a service owned by phenomenally rich
artists who have been the _best_ compensated by the existing record label
structure (at the expense of indie artists), trying to throw their weight
around and maintain their power in streaming as well. While fraudulently
depriving other artists of revenue from Tidal, if this article is correct.

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jacquesm
> I'm sorry, but this reads like astroturfing.

Without concrete evidence you should not make such claims.

