Tidal fires its CFO and COO

Tidal has let go of its CFO Chris Hart and COO Nils Juell, the company confirmed to The Verge. The news of their terminations was originally reported by the Swedish news site Breakit and Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv. Breakit reports that Hart was let go after a dispute about how Tidal shares its streaming data.

For its part, Tidal says it has moved its operations and accounting divisions from Oslo, Norway to New York where owner Jay Z maintains an office, but notes its tech team will remain in Norway. "Tidal has terminated CFO Chris Hart and COO Nils Juell," Tidal said in a statement to The Verge. "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."

"We have moved our accounting and operations team to New York."

If Hart was let go over a streaming-data dispute, it wouldn't be too shocking. Tidal has not shared streaming data with Nielsen Music on a couple of its recent exclusive releases, including Beyonce’s new single "Formation" which isn’t present on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, and Kanye West's latest album, The Life of Pablo — which failed to crack the Top 20 on the Billboard 200 chart. Despite the fact that the album's 18 tracks are currently the 18 most popular tracks on the streaming service, the lack of reporting by Tidal, where the project is exclusively available, caused the album to miss Billboard's chart entirely.

Juell and Hart have become the latest Oslo-based executives to get the axe, after head of product Ervin Draganovic and CEO Peter Tonstad left the company last summer. On the bright side, this gives new CEO Jeff Toig the chance to build out his own team in the US, and see if he can change the perception (and too often the reality) of Tidal over the coming months.

Update: March 1st, 11:50AM: Tidal says it does share streaming data with Nielsen Music unless requested not to by an artist.