Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) has been doggedly investigating Tidal’s business for several years now (reminder for recent readers wondering about the Norwegian connection: Tidal started life as Scandinavian streaming service WiMP before Jay-Z bought its parent company).
Its latest report is an update on last year’s ‘fake streams’ investigation, which alleged artificial inflation of stream-counts on Tidal for Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ and Kanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ albums.
Yesterday, DN reported that Norway’s National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) has launched an investigation into the allegations – with DN claiming four former Tidal employees have already been interviewed in-depth, three of whom left the company suddenly in 2016, at the time of the alleged streams inflation.
Tidal has issued a statement on the latest report, training its fire on the newspaper. “Tidal is not a suspect in the investigation. We are communicating with Økokrim. From the very beginning, DN has quoted documents that they have not shared with us in spite of repeated requests,” claimed its spokesperson. “DN has repeatedly made claims based on information we believe may be falsified. We are aware that at least one person we suspected of theft has been questioned. We cannot comment further at this time and refer to our previous statement, which still stands.”
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