Last week Tyler the Creator accused Tidal of rigging the Billboard music charts by making Tidal exclusives available for free to non-subscribers to increase their streaming numbers [click here if you missed that].
Billboard responds to the controversy...
From Billboard
We’re getting questions around whether Billboard is suddenly counting free streams for this coming week’s Billboard 200, seemingly due to some misinformation posted online. We’d like to take a moment to clear up any confusion that misinformation may have caused.
Free streams -- with “free” defined as streams a listener has accessed without having a paid subscription or as part of a trial period subscription -- have counted towards the Billboard 200 since it changed to a consumption model in 2014 where the ranking is determined by blending album sales, track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units.
Nothing in our process has changed for this week.
