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Tidal officially a suspect in gross data fraud case, new court papers show

By | Published on Thursday 11 June 2020

Tidal

Tidal is officially suspected of gross data fraud by Norwegian authorities. This is according to recently released court papers relating to efforts by the Jay-Z owned streaming firm to stop those authorities from seizing confidential documents.

Fans of streaming controversies will remember that, in May 2018, Norwegian business newspaper Dagens Næringsliv ran a report accusing Tidal of skewing official data relating to streams of Kanye West’s ‘Life Of Pablo’ and Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’, both albums over which the streaming firm enjoyed exclusives. Because of the way streaming royalties are calculated each month, if the play counts for those records were artificially increased, not only would those artists and their labels get more money than they were due, everyone else’s payments for that time period would also go down.

DN was particularly interested in the operations of Tidal because the service began life as the Nordic digital music service WiMP. The newspaper said that it first investigated the alleged dodgy data relating to the West and Beyonce albums after people pointed out that the official number of plays for both records were particularly high given the size of Tidal’s userbase.

Some Tidal users also reported that their accounts seemed to show that they’d been playing the records even though they hadn’t. The newspaper then got its hands on some internal data from Tidal which it had some academics scrutinise. They concluded that said data had been tampered with.

For its part, Tidal has always denied any wrongdoing. But Norwegian collecting society Tono [filed a complaint with police](Some Tidal users also reported that their accounts seemed to show that they’d been playing the records even though they hadn’t. It then got its hands on some internal data from Tidal which it had some academics scrutinise. They concluded the data had been tampered with.) over the alleged data tampering. Then, in January last year, Norway’s economic crime agency, aka Okokrim, confirmed that it was investigating the allegations made against the Tidal company.

Since then there has been plenty of back and forth between Tidal and Okokrim regarding confidential documents that the latter says it needs to review. Tidal has been trying to prevent the crime agency from seeing said documents through the Norwegian courts.

After a district court and appeals court both said there were sufficient grounds for forcing Tidal to hand over those documents, the streaming service took the matter to the appeals committee of the country’s Supreme Court.

According to a new report from DN earlier this week, that Supreme Court committee has now also ruled that Okokrim is entitled to seize the documents. Court papers related to that decision also reveal that Tidal has been classified as a suspect in Okokrim’s investigation since last June.

When the agency first confirmed it was investigating the claims against Tidal, the streaming firm stressed that – despite that investigation – it wasn’t officially suspected of committing any crime.

Clearly that changed last summer when Okokrim decided that Tidal was officially suspected of gross data fraud. Though whether that classification was instigated based on new evidence or simply so that the regulator could proceed with its legal action to secure those documents isn’t clear.

Tidal is yet to respond to these latest developments.



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