Tidal And Universal Differ On Rihanna's ANTI Leak 2016 In Review

(Radio.com) Tidal And Universal Differ On Rihanna's ANTI Leak was a top 16 story from Feb 2016: According to executives, the sudden release of Rihanna's ANTI was as surprising to them as it was to fans. Despite shipping 1.4 million copies in the first 15 hours of release, the guerrilla strategy wasn't meant to be so off-the-cuff. Reps for streaming service TIDAL, which officially released the album, was quick to point fingers.

"Look, 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," Grace Kim, TIDAL's director of Marketing, told SPIN. She later clarified the comment, saying she was referring to an error by the album's distributor--Universal Music Group (UMG).

An anonymous UMG executive bristled at Kim's suggestion in an interview with Billboard. "This whole thing is absurd, we would have taken responsibility if it were our error," one anonymous UMG executive told Billboard. "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." Read the original report here.