Prominent music streaming service Tidal is facing trouble on multiple fronts. The service said Friday it’s investigating a “data breach” that resulted in a publication claiming the company was artificially inflating numbers at the same time it’s falling behind in paying artist royalties.

The data breach relates directly to a report first published by newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv May 9 quoting direct data from the company that showed it had been artificially inflating streaming numbers. There were specific references to streams of Beyoncé and Kanye West’s 2016 albums — “Lemonade” and “The Life of Pablo” — to generate increased royalty payouts for the artists at the expense of others.

The same report also claimed that Tidal is “behind with payments directly to the three major international record companies.” Confirming the veracity of the data, Music Industry News reported that “two prominent Norway-based music businesses, independent label Propellor Records and its distributor, Sony-owned Phonofile,” confirmed the report, with one saying they had not received a payment from Tidal since October.

Tidal vigorously denied all the claims, calling them among other things a smear. But as Rolling Stone rightly pointed out as “what may appear a bit of a contradiction,” the company also said it was employing an “independent, third party cyber-security firm” to review the “potential data breach.”

Emphasizing just how contradictory both positions are, Tidal Chief Executive Richard Sanders said in a statement reported by Variety that “we reject and deny the claims that have been made by Dagens Næringsliv.” But then added, “When we learned of a potential data breach we immediately, and aggressively, began pursuing multiple avenues available to uncover what occurred. This included reporting it to proper authorities, pursuing legal action, and proactively taking steps to further strengthen our stringent security measures that are already in place.”

Tidal has been a strange player in the music streaming space from the day it was acquired by Jay Z (pictured) along with a range of prominent artists back in 2015. The service differentiates itself from players such as Spotify AB and Apple Inc. by offering high-fidelity music streaming with exclusive streaming rights to certain artists.

But it has been beset with problems. In April 2016, it was reported that Project Panther Bidco, Jay Z’s holding company, was suing the original owners of the service over allegedly inflated subscriber numbers. And in a rumor that never panned out, Apple itself was reported to be interested in buying the company in July 2016.

Despite initial promise and exclusive, leading artists, Tidal has hardly made a dent at all in terms of market share. It didn’t rate in the U.S. top 10 in March, meaning it has fewer than 6.6 million U.S. users, while worldwide it has such a small presence it’s grouped in the “others” category in a report from Midia in November.

Sprint Corp., soon to be part of T-Mobile US Inc., injected $200 million into Tidal for a one-third share in January 2017. It’s an investment T-Mobile CEO John Legere will probably be looking to get rid of in short order once the T-Mobile-Sprint acquisition closes later this year.

Photo: d2sf/Wikimedia Commons