NTNU, a large Norwegian university, analyzed log files provided by the newspaper DN and found evidence of data manipulation. The report is public, in English and can be viewed here: <a href="https://www.dn.no/staticprojects/special/2018/05/09/0600/dokumentar/strommekuppet/data/documentation/NTNU-rapport_til_publisering.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.dn.no/staticprojects/special/2018/05/09/0600/dok...</a>
It wasn't clear in the article. Is the idea that they were inflating play counts of songs related to the owners so that they could suppress the royalties paid to other artists, with the idea that they each get a piece of a pie based on number of plays?
I suspect this may have been an open secret in the industry- J.Cole calls this out in his feature for A Lot by 21 Savage, for one.<p>[capitalized song title for readability]