Universal Music Group has been catching it this year! Last month we reported that they’re allegedly being sued for sampling a song that James Brown produced in the 70’s. It was used in Justin Timberlake’s Suit & Tie hit, so it’s kind of a big deal. Fast forward a few weeks, the production company is now being blamed for, perhaps, the most embarrassing album release to date.
Once the first notifications of the leak hit Twitter, ANTI spread like wild fire amongst fans who have impatiently waiting for the album for over a year now. It hit around 7 p.m. on Thursday before what Tidal alleges was supposed to be its initial release the following day. The day after that, Tidal’s marketing director grace Kim chopped the incident up to a system error which she swears wouldn’t effect the album’s performance. A rep later clarified that Kim was “referring to a system error caused by Universal Music Group. The error was not something Tidal caused.”
Basically, UMG did not like being thrown under the bus, and they clapped back, honey! They read Tidal and in a nutshell told them that they need to just focus on Rihanna. A spokesperson for the label said, “This whole thing is absurd, we would have taken responsibility if it were our error,” says one UMG executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Instead of having their flack flail around trying to revise their own media spin, maybe they should just focus on serving Rihanna — that’s what we’re focused on.”
I see no lies considering how disorganized the release was. It caused the album to only debut at #27 in the only charting day last week, but luckily, it’s already making strides to be #1 after this week! ANTI was allegedly streamed over 13 million times and downloaded over 1.4 million times according to Billboard, so where does this land the album with the RIAA? Well, they have certified the album platinum thanks to their new rules *rolls eyes* however Billboard and Nielsen Music have not bestowed these accolades upon Rih Rih. We’ll have to wait for the games to begin when physical copies of ANTI hit stores this Friday!
We’re living in a very interesting time for music, Roommates.
TSR STAFF: Talia O. @theclosetratchet on Instagram & @tallyohhh on Twitter!
Source: http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6859535/tidal-blames-universal-rihanna-album-leak
