Jay Z has bought and re-launched the service called Tidal, which was initially launched last October. And would it surprise anyone if we see the same criticisms of Spotify – smaller artists getting dreadful royalty rates, the service bullying independent labels who don't sign up to these dreadful royalty rates, major artists getting preferential treatment – pop up with Tidal, too?Īt the end of the day, the music industry is still fucked.Rapper Jay Z has restarted a music subscription site to provide a new kind of streaming service. There are some exclusives. Some of the things Tidal promises are exclusive releases – these will include things like The White Stripes' first ever television appearance, Daft Punk's dodgy Electroma film, and playlists curated by the Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Coldplay, and so on.īut is it any good? No matter how many 'slebs endorse the service, people will ultimately vote with their wallets rather than their hearts. What if it’s just four minutes of just music and then you start rapping?" What if it’s a minute and 17, what if it’s 11 you know, just break format. It doesn't have to be three minutes and 30 seconds. And we’re encouraging people to put it in any format they like. "Creatively, what do you hope happens, beginning tomorrow?", asks the Billboard interviewer. "Artists come here and start making songs 18 minutes long, or whatever," Jay Z responds, bizarrely, "I know this is going to sound crazy, but maybe they start attempting to make a Like a Rolling Stone, you know, a song that doesn’t have a recognizable hook, but is still considered one of the greatest songs of all time, the freedom that this platform will allow art to flourish here. Less profit for our bottom line, more money for the artist fantastic." "We didn’t like the direction music was going and thought maybe we could get in and strike an honest blow," Jay Z told Billboard, "Will artists make more money? Even if it means less profit for our bottom line, absolutely. It puts people before profit. Well, obviously it puts profit first, but the aim with Tidal is to at least be slightly fairer on songwriters and producers than other streaming services are. He's deleted his angry tweet, but the stories are still up. Also, their claim to be on the side of artists was slightly undermined after they paid for a bad imitation of the Haxan Cloak's music in their promo video rather than actually licensing the Haxan Cloak's music. It's certainly on the side of the famous artists who appeared at the press conference, given they all have a stake in the company (cronymism in action!). Tidal is on the side of artists. Ostensibly, anyway. Celebrities are better than normal people because they're famous. And he brought in some of his famous music industry friends for a promo video and press conference – so, Alicia Keys, the Arcade Fire, Daft Punk, Beyoncé, Jack White, Kanye West, Madonna, Deadmau5, etc. It's literally just a streaming service. Normally reporting on the music tech industry is literally the dullest fucking shit in the world, but Tidal is different because it's being spearheaded by occasional rapper Jay Z. On top of this, it'll offer a few exclusives from some high profile artists – maybe the odd demo, live performance, advance stream, curated playlist, etc. It'll cost $19.99 a month and it offers lossless files for streaming – so, higher quality files than you get on Spotify or YouTube (despite most people not owning the appropriate hardware for making this higher quality audible). Tidal is a new business being launched by venture capitalists. Despite all the PR bluster, Tidal is basically just a premium streaming service.
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