It was a sloppy rollout for Rhianna’s newest LP ANTI; with a release date that never came, and then a leak, and the album’s arrival the next day, it was all very confusing.
Nearly a week ago on Thursday (Jan. 28), Rihanna’s album ANTI leaked on TIDAL, and while the streaming service quickly took the page down, they weren’t fast enough for fans who quickly grabbed up the songs to post snippets of the unauthorized LP.
The next day, her album arrived, but TIDAL wants everyone to know that they aren’t to blame for the leak, rather RiRi’s label, Universal Music Group, is.
Tidal’s Director of Marketing, Grace Kim, spoke out about the leak, saying it was a “systems error” on behalf of Universal. “We know what happened here, in the sense that unfortunately we still rely on systems, and there was a system error. But I don’t think it hurt it at all,” she said, “referring to a system error caused by Universal Music Group,” another TIDAL rep added.
BUT, Universal fired back a rebuttal, claiming everything on their end was executed as planned. According to Billboard, one UMG executive explained, “This whole thing is absurd, we would have taken responsibility if it were our error,” he said. “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.”
Well! Either way, ANTI was a success thanks to Samsung’s partnership; one million download copies of the album were purchased by the electronics company and given for free to fans, causing her album to go platinum by default.
