Two more executives terminated at Tidal

The celebrity-owned Tidal music service, lead by Jay Z, has laid off Chief Financial Officer Chris Hart and Chief Operating Officer Nils Juell.

Hart worked as CFO of Tidal since 2014, and had been at the company since 2012. Juell had been COO since 2007.

The sackings emerged after the service got hit with a US$5 million lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement and publishing royalties.

A statement from the service confirmed, “Tidal has terminated CFO Chris Hart and COO Nils Juell. As Tidal has grown into a global operation serving 46 countries we have moved our accounting and operations team to New York while our technology team and key support staff remain in Oslo.”

But according to Swedish news site Breakit, Hart was fired over a dispute on how streaming numbers were being reported at Tidal. He joined the company in 2012 and became its CFO in 2014.

Juell, who has had that role since 2007, declined to comment on his firing as he’s on vacation.

As reported in TMN yesterday, Tidal is being sued by Yesh Music Publishing and John Emanuele of New York duo The American Dollar. The suit claims that Tidal streamed 118 of its songs without permission or payment, and that Tidal deliberately miscalculated the number of streams the band’s songs received by tens of millions.

Tidal has refuted the allegations, insisting, “Tidal is up to date on all royalties for the rights to the music stated in Yesh Music LLC and John Emanuele’s claim, and they are misinformed as to who, if anyone, owes royalty payments to them.”

Analysts suggest that some of Tidal’s issues stem from the fact that it was a small Scandinavian streaming service before it was bought out by Jay Z and couldn’t handle the jump in streams and the growth of subscribers to the current 1 million

It was reported last week that sales of Kanye West’s new album The Life Of Pablo” were left off the charts because Tidal didn’t provide streaming data to Nielsen Music which calculates the US charts. Although all of Kanye West’s 18 tracks on the album are currently the hottest on Tidal, the album has not entered the Billboard Top 200.

Tidal has had a problem keeping its executives. It is currently on its third CEO. Also going through the revolving door after Jay Z took over were its Chief Investment Officer, the US Marketing Manager, and the Senior Vice President of Label and Artist Relations.