Tidal Blames Universal for Rihanna Leak

BY Josiah HughesPublished Feb 1, 2016

Though it still hasn't even existed for a year, the Tidal streaming service has faced a number of trials and tribulations. Internally, the company has already gone through a shit ton of CEOs. Then, last week, the service was set to drop Rihanna's big-ticket new album ANTI, and it botched that by leaking the record early. Now, the company claims the flub wasn't its fault.

A Tidal representative told Spin that the leak was due to a "system error caused by Universal Music Group," adding, "The error was not something TIDAL caused."

Further, the company's marketing director Grace Kim demonstrated her marketing abilities by arguing that the Rihanna leak didn't cause any damage. "Look, we know what happened here, in the sense that unfortunately we still rely on systems, and there was a system error," she said. "But I don't think it hurt it at all."

"This is the new model," she continued, offering up some more of that classic Tidal-speak. "The new model is about how many fans are we getting the music to. Soon enough everyone else will have to come along for the ride. We believe this is just the beginning of how we market albums, how we distribute music to fans, how fans consume music. It's just a different way of thinking."

In Tidal's defence, maybe the leak worked. ANTI did, after all, amass 1.4 million sales in 15 hours, not to mention its 13 million streams.

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