This will probably be the final nail in Tidal's coffin -- it is now being accused of falsifying streaming numbers for high profile artists like Beyonce and Kanye West -- at the expense of smaller artists. Essentially, allegedly, Tidal redistributed streams to the likes of Beyoncé and Kanye West in order to generate massive royalty payouts at the expense of other, smaller artists.
Variety pinpointed a fact too, that in the past, people have been skeptical of Tidal's streaming reports, because they didn't seem to add up.
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.
How crazy is this? It makes sense though -- those streaming numbers seem incredibly high for a service that doesn't have a whole ton of subscribers. If it all is true, it's horrible of the company to redistribute streams to artists who don't need it at the expense of smaller artists who desperately need the streams & money.