I don’t think there is any ‘getting away’ with anything. They are already guilty in the court of public opinion in the eyes of many simply because of who owns them. It doesn’t mean the owner had any complicity in what was done even if he benefitted but there has been a continuous campaign to colour our perception of what is happening in this company. One comment made earlier was telling. How was this ‘at the expense of other artists’?
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I am not sure it’s that simple. People who simply hate Tidal aren’t potential customers they have lost due to this streaming numbers manipulation; they were never going to be customers anyway.
I would be interested to know if anyone reading this topic, who is a Tidal subscriber and reasonably happy with the service, will cancel their subscription prompted by the revelations above.
As for potential customers that might have joined if this hadn’t happened, it’s hard to say, but I would guess they’d lose a similar percentage as existing subscribers going on a hashtag deletetidal campaign.
As a hifi tier subscriber myself, I won’t cancel before I have an alternative, I’m afraid, at least not at this stage where this hasn’t been upholded in a court of law or there is indisputable proof of their guilt.
I never mentioned impact on customer base for a very good reason. This is designed to influence the market. The people who, like Sprint, might be willing to go into partnership or help finance Tidal going forward. That is where it matters and what this does is calls into question Carters’ fitness to be in charge. However it is far from conclusive. And from experience I know how far some companies will go to disadvantage and even discredit their rivals so to me, like you it is of no consequence. Should someone else come into the arena I’ll do the trial and see how they measure up but I am in no rush to leave because I see this for what it is.
“At the expense of other artists”:
Tidal has a certain amount of money to distribute. It is not like “hey, you listened to one more song, so we’ll distribute additional money”, it is “you listened to one more song, so we’ll put another mark on this artist’s list, and he’ll get a bigger part of the pot”.
If Kanye and Beyonce HAD people listening to them to that extent, no problem. But people were NOT listening to them, and the only reason they got paid was someone cheated and pretended they were played, Kanye and Beyonce WILL have received money belonging to others.
Tidal claim it is all rumors.
The data analysts claim the data showing ONE user has been listening to 27 Kanye songs simultanously. In the middle of the night. And yes, it could happen. Maybe.
My problem is when Tidal now shift from screaming “the data is wrong” to “you have no rights to that data!”.
Instinct says I doubt anyone has signed a ‘share of the pot’ type contract but to be honest I don’t know. But Kanye and Beyonce can afford to pay it back if they have to. And your problem hasn’t happened yet! Like I said, I have seen first hand how commercial competitors work to discredit each other so until I hear more I am not going to pass judgement. There is another point too. Piracy is an issue and illegal streaming sites present with a legitimate id. It is possible to see one id responsible for multiple streams but I would like to see other information like IP traces and the like. The middle of my night is the middle of someone else’s day so Tidal may just need to tighten things up in that department.
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I find it hard to believe that they would fake data this poorly, though. It would make way more sense to throw in the extra plays where they could have happened without anybody noticing, like artist radio. Why concentrate them like that? Those would be some pretty incompetent fakers.
How the data mentioned in the article compares perfectly with the official numbers is also suspect. That they end up with the exact same number is pretty unlikely, since there are always questions of when do you consider a song played (does it have to be played in its entirety, how much of it needs to be played, can it be paused and restarted, etc.), what the exact boundaries of a month are across all the different time zones, etc. Sure, they should get close – but the exact same number? Very unusual in my experience.
This whole thing seems a bit fishy to me.
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Good point.
Until your comment here, I was of the impression that the fact that they DID get the same numbers were some sort of proof that the data was valid.
But thinking about it, maybe it makes sense after all.
Tidal has to LOG how they calculate. And if they have access to that log… “Proof” would be “we see that there are a trillion fake listenings on this artist’s account, and they have all been included before payout”
If they had “there are a trillion fake listenings on this artist’s account, and they are NOT included in the payout”, the data would be flawed.
Then, of course, you have the “we suspect they deleted a trillion listenings on this artist’s account, and then recreated the same trillion by putting the data randomly into peoples history just to prove we cheated”.
Which is probably doable, but should be caught if you analyse the data thoroughly. (It is possible to “fix” a database like that, but usually not consistently enough for it to be indetectable afterwards)
This is absolutely no joke. There are already several artists in Norway who removes their music from tidal after this news. If it comes an investigation and it is to be proven they have manipulated the numbers, tidal most likely is dead?
My guess is that if this is true, there will be some third party verification process that will be built into Tidal’s records. No need to panic on this, yet.
In terms of how this works, I obviously don’t know if it is the same structure, but I’ve done deals with BMI and ASCAP before. Those were “all you can eat” for a fixed price based on size of facility. So it is possible that Tidal pays based on number of subscribers or some other relatively fixed metric and the number of plays a given artist gets really does vary what they get from that fixed amount.
One thing I have trouble seeing, though, is the scenario where those artists could effectively instruct some tech or DB engineer to fake those plays. And doing it manually themselves would be highly labor intensive and not worth the shift in royalties.
“This is a smear campaign from a publication that once referred to our employee [chief operating officer Lior Tibon] as an ‘Israeli intelligence officer’ and our owner as a ‘crack dealer’,”
The university that did the research seems to have got the data from the newspaper and concluded that the data had been manipulated but they couldn’t state when the manipulation had occurred.
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I agree with Mikael - build your own library. Have always felt that Roon should focus more on the software/interface itself rather than integrating with streaming services.
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Integration with Tidal’s vast streaming library is half of Roon’s value proposition for me. Roon would be worth less to me without it. If Tidal goes, unsure if I would continue subscribing unless there is a replacement.
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Agree .I have a largish personal library but find Tidal( or similar),
is a great asset to tap into.Would hate to see in absent from Roon.There’s a great big musical world out there.
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Integration with Tidal is 99% of Roons value proposition to me. It is the only reason i purchased the annual license. About 9 months ago i decided to stop buying downloads as I felt Tidal was sufficient, so far I have not regretted that decision.
If they do go under though I guess there is nothing we can do
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I am new to Tidal, just a month or so but I do find it good to dip into for certain genres.
I have a largish library after a lifetime collecting, I do wonder should I stop collecting and rely on Tidal and catch up if they do go belly up?
Also the tight integration with Roon is the break point on whether to stay with Roon at all. I have serious concerns about how classical music , box sets, navigation etc. is handled in Roon and I can do it much better in JRiver . Tidal is currently tipping the balance
All this speculation on the future of Tidal does worry me somewhat.
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Roon’s metadata wouldn’t be nearly as compelling without a high quality, huge library streaming service behind it. I mean, Roon would still have some very cool features, fir sure, but Roon metadata helping explore one’s own collection pales in comparison to helping explore the whole world of music, or close to it, which is effectively what you get with a large streaming service.
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I agree 100%. Without Tidal or a replcement streaming service, I would only continue to subscribe to Roon if there was a price reduction.
Until that nightmare scenario occurs, I’m a very happy Roon user.
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One way to get that price reduction is to pay now for the permanent license.
That way Roon is free every year in the future!
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I think one should consider a permanent license.
The actual life license might not be offered forever.
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Anyway, Tidal will be sued by the Norwegian music organisation Tono.
https://olisa.tv/emmanuel/norwegian-artists-sue-tidal-over-false-streaming/
I´m also very concerned, love the Tidal integration to Roon.