According to a report from a Norwegian newspaper, Tidal inflated the amount of subscribers they had on at least two different occasions in order to look more successful than they actually were. According to the report, when the “Hard Knock Life” rapper tweeted back in September 2015 that his music streaming service had “1,000,000 people and counting,” Tidal had 830,000 subscribers according to the service’s internal report. The article’s writer, Dagens Næringsliv, says that Tidal’s internal report’s subscriber tally may have been incorrect as well. Per the article, Tidal made payments to record labels indicating the service had roughly 350,000 subscribers, a far cry from the number stated in Jay Z’s tweet. In addition, the article points out that Tidal put out public user numbers that were not congruent with their internal numbers. In a press release from March 30 of last year, Tidal stated that they had 3 million paying subscribers. But according to the article, internal numbers from April show that Tidal had just 1.2 million subscribers, while payments to record labels showed the service had just 850,000 subscribers. The report has yet to be confirmed, while Tidal has not commented on the article.
