Jay-Z recently purchased the music streaming service Tidal for a cool $56 million US, and in order to ensure maximum publicity for the the re-launch, he enlisted a bunch of his famous mates to come and help out.
Louder than words. The revolution is coming. Turn up. #TIDALforALL https://t.co/syN2pgvjkR
— TIDAL (@TIDALHiFi) March 30, 2015
Earlier today, Hov was joined on stage by the likes of Beyoncé, Kanye, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Jack White, Rihanna, Arcade Fire, Madonna and Nicki Minaj, while Calvin Harris and Chris Martin checked in by video conference.
As an artist-owned service, Tidal has some lofty goals, aiming to be “a new direction for the music industry from both a creative and business perspective”. Whether it can pull this off in an already crowded streaming marketplace is another matter.
Unlike its competitors, Tidal offers no free, ad-supported plan. As it stands, the basic service will run you $11.99 AU a month, while the premium service will give you lossless audio for a somewhat eye-watering $23.99 a month.
Tidal has deals with all of the major labels, and presumably, they are hoping that this, along with curated playlists and editorial and promised “exclusive” material from the artists involved, will be enough of an inducement for consumers.
Per reports in The Verge, Tidal will pay double the standard streaming royalties to its artists, though only from streams on the more expensive plan. This could be why Taylor Swift agreed to put her back catalogue, recently pulled from Spotify, on the service.
Spotify is currently the biggest name in streaming, with 60 million customers – 15 million of these pay to use the service, and the rest listen for free, with ads. By contrast, Tidal currently has 17,000 subscribers.
Later this year, things will get even more interesting when Apple, otherwise known as the path of least resistance, launches its own Beats streaming service, integrated with the iTunes Music Store.
