That it is; they are being investigated for violating section 371 of the Norwegian penal code, which reads:

Section 371.Fraud

A penalty of a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years shall be applied to any person who with intent to obtain an illicit gain for himself/herself or others

a) causes, strengthens or exploits a mistaken belief and thereby deceives someone into doing or omitting to do something by which someone suffers a loss or risks a loss, or

b) makes use of false or incomplete information, modifies data or a computer system, uses a credit or debit card which belongs to another person, or otherwise illicitly affects the result of automated data processing, thereby causing someone a loss or risk of loss.

Specifically, Tidal are accused of violating paragraph b) above.

Whose loss is it to inflate a stream count?

You and I jointly get $10/month, to be split according to our stream counts. We each get 100 views/month, so we both take home $5/month. Now, I start lying, and saying that I am actually receiving 900 views/month. With 90% of the views, I take home $9/month, leaving only $1/month to you. I have fraudulently stolen $4/month from you.

Thanks, this makes sense if royalty payments are a revenue share based on stream share, and not a per-stream fee.

Streams in the industry are payed out according to the pro-rata model, not the user-centric one. TIDAL, when being WiMP, helped with studies on this: https://musically.com/2015/08/18/user-centric-streaming-payo...

If you and your buddies own the service, and you order the nerds over in Norway/Northpole to inflate the play counts of you and your buddies's music so that you don't have to pay other randos so much money: all of the other artists.

Yes. Insert half-serious joke about the the business ethics of a self-confessed former drug dealer (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/11/jay-z-beyonce-b...) here.

But Obama brought him to the white house! I thought he was a nice guy