[citricsquid]

As I understand it the 250,000,000 number refers to total streams of all tracks on the album[1], it does not refer to plays of the entire album, so the article is wrong. The album is 20 tracks which means we're looking at 12.5 million streams per track. There were (and still are) many offers for a free Tidal trial, which were shared all over the internet at the time the album became available, so I do think it's possible that Tidal could have had those numbers. Paying subscribers? No, but users? You could sign up to Tidal for free, and Kanye albums are very highly anticipated... Is it reasonable to expect ~3 million people to each listen to an album ~4 times through on average? I certainly listened to it at least a dozen times in the first 2 weeks and know many friends who did the same.

For comparison Taylor Swift's album Reputation did ~500,000,000 streams in the first few weeks after it launched, granted that was available on all services and not just Tidal: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42564917

I'm a little suspicious of the numbers, given Taylor Swift has a wider appeal than Kanye and her album was on all services but you could sign up for Tidal for free and the article is clearly wrong when it says "a claim that would have meant every subscriber played the album an average of eight times per day" so I'm inclined to say Tidal are telling the truth because if they did inflate the numbers then they would not have needed to inflate them from, say, 25 million to 250 million which is what the report seems to suggest.

[1] See the BBC Taylor Swift article for an example of how the figures are calculated

[jsgo]

At this stage, I think as far as for metrics of this nature, it is time to stop quantifying album streams and focus on streams of tracks within the albums (in the example you gave, someone streaming the entire album should count 20x). I, myself, still buy albums in full, but I think there's a significant number of people who go for singles at this stage. Streaming, probably just as much of a divide.

To focus at the track level is about the only way to quantify for both cases.

[okmokmz]

>it is time to stop quantifying album streams and focus on streams of tracks within the albums

They already do this (or at least the RIAA does)

>In the new structure, 150 streams of a song equals one paid download, and ten paid downloads equates to an album download. So, an artist’s music will have to be streamed on any of the approved, included services 1,500 times for an album “sale” to be counted. [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/02/13/now-tha...

[jsgo]

> ten paid downloads equates to an album download.

But it gets fuzzy here. If the album has 10 tracks, it makes sense, but for ones with less than that or more than that, it doesn't hash out.

I'm just saying for these kind of metrics they should, now, stick to the track level but group them by album (ie Taylor Swift would have x streams/downloads from 1989 and y streams/downloads from Reputation).

Albums in these metrics just muddies the water too much and doesn't really quantify for those who go for singles. Say an artist releases a really, really popular song on a terrible album that no one buys/streams. That song performs well, lots of streams and lots of downloads or buys. Should the album be considered a hit if it is just a single track on it that performed well? Even if no one, or relatively few, streamed or bought the album proper?

[simlevesque]

> for ones with [...] more than that, it doesn't hash out.

Chris Brown released an album last year exploiting this fact. He released a fourty track double album. If that album is streamed in it's entirety a thousand times, he gets four sales on the charts. Many hiphop act did the same last year. The last Migos album had 24 songs and their label had just released a 30 songs compilation 2 months prior. Drake's last project was dubbed a 'playlist' and had 22 songs.

[shams93]

Well if these others are exclusive Tidal releases then those numbers might be a little loose but are relatively within the ballpark because they've narrowed access down to a single source. The bigger question is whether artists benefit from being on every single service or are better served by narrowing releases to a single distributor whether its tidal or something else or their own website.