Tidal looking into possible data breach as it denies inflating Beyonce & Kanye West stream...

Posted:
in General Discussion edited May 2018
Troubled music service Tidal is hiring a third-party security firm to investigate a possible data breach, amid accusations it inflated streaming figures for albums by Beyonce and Kanye West.

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"We reject and deny the claims that have been made by Dagens Naeringsliv," said Tidal CEO Richard Sanders, referring to the Norwegian publication that has made multiple allegations, including that the service is behind on royalty payments.

"Although we do not typically comment on stories we believe to be false, we feel it is important to make sure that our artists, employees, and subscribers know that we are not taking the security and integrity of our data lightly, and we will not back down from our commitment to them," Music Business Worldwide quoted Sanders as saying.

The executive said that the company has pursued "multiple avenues" into investigating a possible breach, including "reporting it to proper authorities, pursuing legal action, and proactively taking steps to further strengthen our stringent security measures that are already in place."

In making its inflation accusations, DN said it had conducted a year-long investigation, and relied on forensic analysis of a hard drive with raw data from Tidal. In response Tidal accused the publication of running a "smear campaign" with "stolen and manipulated" data.

Blowback from the scandal has seen Norwegian royalty collection group Tono launch a police complaint, and one in Denmark start an audit of Tidal figures.

While Tidal has the backing of famous artists like Jay-Z -- to whom Beyonce is married -- the company has struggled to draw in subscribers. Spotify is deeply entrenched, having launched in 2008 and become the "default" on-demand service for many labels, thanks to 75 million paid subscribers and even more people on its free ad-based tier.

Apple Music recently topped 50 million subscribers, aided by Apple's cash and deep integration across iPhones and other devices. There is no free option for the service after a three-month trial.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Oh, boy. There is literally no data that is transmitted or kept online that should ever be considered 100% secure. At some point all encryption methods will be crackable with the types of AI that are in development now.
  • Reply 2 of 11
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    “Troubled music service Tidal...”? Oh please, oh pretty please, can we say “beleaguered” instead. Or is that term exclusively reserved for Apple?
    chasmwatto_cobracornchip
  • Reply 3 of 11
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,930member
    It was breached and all 10 accounts were accessed. /s
    chasmevilutionwatto_cobraanton zuykovjbdragon
  • Reply 4 of 11
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,038member
    We must've been hacked isn't a great defense when you're claiming the hackers broke in to help your closest friends and investors.

    lkrupp said:
    “Troubled music service Tidal...”? Oh please, oh pretty please, can we say “beleaguered” instead. Or is that term exclusively reserved for Apple?
    I don't feel it's the best term for Tidal. When I think something is beleaguered I feel like it was well established and successful before it was best with difficulties. Tidal has still always felt like it was in start up mode without every having its head above the water. I'm not even sure I'd use it for a well and long established service like SiriusXM that owns their market.
    edited May 2018
  • Reply 5 of 11
    9secondkox29secondkox2 Posts: 3,110member
    Tidal is still in existence?

    whoa. Talk about money pit. 

    Invest invest invest with no return. 

    Must be a a matter of not wanting to admit failure. 

    And lets be real here. Tidal is a failure of epic proportions. 

    The way that guy guy and his company went after Apple like they were something cool and Apple was somehow the definition of all that’s wrong with the world... the audacity makes it hard to look humble after (anyone remember their “Apple is interfering with artistry” public statement when they tried and failed to pirate an Apple contracted stream with Drake?) must be hard to eat that crow. 

    Its hard to take them seriously at all. 

    And the comment sbout not commenting on stories stories they believe to be false, yet they themselves author falsehoods all the time is pure potty humor. 
    edited May 2018 claire1chasmwatto_cobracornchip
  • Reply 6 of 11
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,568member
    Slight correction: Apple Music does not have 50M subscribers. They have more than 40M paid subscribers, and somewhere between 6M-10M people currently on the free three-month trial. Given their historic conversion rate, a good guess would be currently 44M paid/6M on the trial.
    watto_cobracornchip
  • Reply 7 of 11
    chasm said:
    Slight correction: Apple Music does not have 50M subscribers. They have more than 40M paid subscribers, and somewhere between 6M-10M people currently on the free three-month trial. Given their historic conversion rate, a good guess would be currently 44M paid/6M on the trial.
    they have 50 excluding the trial people.
    watto_cobraanton zuykov
  • Reply 8 of 11
    anton zuykovanton zuykov Posts: 1,056member
    Oh, boy. There is literally no data that is transmitted or kept online that should ever be considered 100% secure. At some point all encryption methods will be crackable with the types of AI that are in development now.
    1. What makes you think there will be no A.I. to strengthen the encryption?
    2. A lot of encryption is based on the fact that right now brute forcing the encryption is not possible, because you do not have enough computational power to do that in a million years. A.I. offers nothing to solve this problem, as it can't increase the speed of computation, nor can it offer some kind of shortcut to remove the complexity of the encryption, without removing the alg from use,
    edited May 2018
  • Reply 9 of 11
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,038member
    Oh, boy. There is literally no data that is transmitted or kept online that should ever be considered 100% secure. At some point all encryption methods will be crackable with the types of AI that are in development now.
    1. What makes you think there will be no A.I. to strengthen the encryption?
    2. A lot of encryption is based on the fact that right now brute forcing the encryption is not possible, because you do not have enough computational power to do that in a million years. A.I. offers nothing to solve this problem, as it can't increase the speed of computation, nor can it offer some kind of shortcut to remove the complexity of the encryption.
    1) I think AI (or just ML in the interim) will definitely be used to strengthen security. Even just knowing how a user inputs their passcode could allow an intelligent system to determine that a device, like GreyKey, is being utilized, not a human.

    2) I can see AI being used to go beyond a typical brute force attack and intelligently derive data about a user to help determine what their passwords may be (or may not be) which could drastically reduce the number of options needed so that computational power for a brute attack becomes less relevant.
    cornchip
  • Reply 10 of 11
    anton zuykovanton zuykov Posts: 1,056member

    macxpress said:
    It was breached and all 10 accounts were accessed. /s
    And three of them were admin accounts..
    cornchip
  • Reply 11 of 11
    cornchipcornchip Posts: 1,954member
    Oh, boy. There is literally no data that is transmitted or kept online that should ever be considered 100% secure. At some point all encryption methods will be crackable with the types of AI that are in development now.
    I have been thinking a lot about this recently and the conclusions are extremely disturbing.
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