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JAY Z WAS joined by a plethora of celebs last night at the launch of his new streaming service Tidal.
But is it the saviour of the music industry, or just an excuse for rich musicians to make even more bucks?
Music listeners, it appears, are divided on that very question.
We’ve got all the details on Tidal right here, but in essence it is a paid-for service that offers better quality streaming of music.
Think Spotify, but not free, (it costs €19.99 per month) and with better-sounding (CD-quality, lossless files) music and videos.
Though seeing as these days we’re used to listening to music at varying quality levels, the latter isn’t important to everyone.
Think about those teens you see on buses playing music out loud: they’re not bothered about the quality, as long as they can connect with their favourite song.
It’s the emotional response they’re most motivated by, and that’s the reason why people go to YouTube or Spotify if they want to listen to a song quickly and easily.
Tidal is co-owned by Jay Z, Beyonce, Daft Punk, Alicia Keys and Madonna, and a host of other major players are involved.
They want an artist-run company, which benefits the artists themselves. They want it to be revolutionary, to change the status quo, to “reestablish the value of music” and to bring fans together.
(If this sounds in any way familiar, by the way, remember the legendary Neil Young launched Pono, which also focused on quality of sound.)
Well, the fact it was launched by mega-rich superstars didn’t go unnoticed, with many questioning exactly how it would benefit independent or smaller musicians.
John Johnston / TwitterPerhaps it would've been better if #TIDALforALL started by championing some emerging artists who aren't mega-rich?
— John Guy Johnston (@jjprojects) March 31, 2015
Humanitas Theatre / Twitter#TIDALforALL JOKE not a revolution this - lets all put money in the pockets of the rich!!! What you think of it @rustyrockets ?
— Humanitas Theatre (@HumanitasT) March 31, 2015
With Tidal, there is the issue of payment. With so much free content online, will people actually pay for the service?
The music industry has changed hugely since even the ‘home taping is killing music’ campaigns (note – home taping didn’t kill music).
Spotify has 60m users, of which 15m are paid-for subscribers. It’s clear people prefer – if given a choice – not to pay for streaming, even if that does mean they have to put up with ads.
But ad-supported streaming generates less revenue than subscription services, as the Financial Times pointed out earlier this year.
Artists don’t earn huge wads from Spotify unless they get tons of plays, given that it pays between $0.006c and $0.0084c per stream.
Spotify’s royalty pay out has gone up as it has begun to rake in more money itself, meaning it has paid out $2bn since 2009. But that’s across a lot of artists.
Spotify argues its users are more willing to spend money on music:
The average amount of money spent by US adults on music is $25, whereas the average Spotify user is worth $41 (our total revenue divided by our total # of users). Simply put, a Spotify customer is 1.6x more financially valuable than the average adult non-Spotify US music consumer.
One independent artist, Zoe Keating, said that she earned $1,764 in 2013 from 403,035 streams on Spotify.
She’s at the opposite end of the spectrum to Thom Yorke, whose band Radiohead embraced technology and downloading by selling their album In Rainbows in 2007 using a ‘pay what you want’ model.
Yorke, however, is fervently anti-Spotify, saying that musicians should “fight” it. His band Atoms for Peace pulled their albums from Spotify.
This aspect of the whole debate, the ‘what would help new and independent artists’? is key when talking about sites like Tidal.
The music game has changed, the music industry has changed, and even listening habits have changed.
But people still make music, bands are still formed, and people still dedicate their time to creating songs. How they earn a crust from this creative pursuit has long been a topic for discussion, but never more so than in today’s era, when anything is available online for free.
Should – and will – Tidal try and help out newer artists, giving them a platform to earn money through streaming, or is that changing the game somewhat?
Time will tell what the site will offer to musicians outside of the multi-million-dollar-earning set.
For now, the listeners are having their say.
Mercier / TwitterYouTube + AddBlocker + Bose Headphones = Better than paying for #TIDALforALL#SorryNotSorry #OutlawTilTheEnd
— Mack from the Dead 💀 (@Mack_Mercier) March 31, 2015
PoliteSouthernHelle / TwitterI love J and Bey and Ri but no #TIDALforALL for me. I got bills so I'm sticking with @Spotify . #TIDALforNOONE #SPOTIFYforALL
— PoliteSouthernHelle (@Angelinoo) March 31, 2015
To counter that, some pointed that while music may be seen as a ‘free’ commodity these days, that’s not because people aren’t willing to spend money.
JC! / Twitterppl are thinking way too into #TIDALforALL its simple really:if you like the service go get it! if you dont then dont no need to rant haha
— Josh(ua)! 🇵🇭 🇮🇪 (@Correg1dor) March 31, 2015
As for Tidal’s ‘right-on’, revolutionary message, there are people who don’t think it’s revolutionary in any form… and that it may have forgotten one thing: the fans.
Gawker called the event out on its sheer weirdness:
Which, given that two of the participants were on Skype, and Madonna straddled the table while signing the ‘proclamation’ isn’t totally off-point:
While, we do admire Madge’s ability to add drama into even the most boring of activities, the launch did demonstrate the star power of this brand new service.
That’s what people have been saying about Tidal, but what about you – will you be signing up?
Tell us what you think in the comments.
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Madonna, lifting her leg like a cat and spraying the contract with her scent rather than sign it.
That’s a disservice to cats!
Smoking is bad, and I wish I could give it up. I read your comment (Mr. Dave) mid-puff and almost choked laughing.
My eyes are red and streaming.
Thanks, you may just have put me off forever!
That press conference was bizarre. How deluded and out of touch are these people ? I read earlier that the combined net worth of all the people standing on the stage was over $2 billion dollars. Looks like they really need my $19.99 to put food on the table. Think I’ll stick to the good old fashioned way of downloading music, the one thats free.
Agreed. I hadn’t realised the billion dollar music industry was in need of saving.
Agreed TC. The hungriest fvckers around. They want money every time a song is repeated. If I buy a fridge I don’t have to pay Currys everytime I open the door.
Exactly, back in the 80s we were told the music industry would be ruined by audio tapes and twin deck recorders, every decade had had its evils to ruin the industry. The “poor” music industry will roll along nicely, and find a way to make more worthy multi millionaires.
I’m all for better sounding audio quality, but at €19.99 a month…. I’ll stick with Spotify who will probably introduce lossless audio streaming now also at a much more attractive price point.
I have been trying Tidal for the past month now , ignoring the crap about who owns/ funds / promotes the thing I wanted to see if the main selling point ( the quality of the audio ) was really worth the 20 euro a month ( I normally use spotify premium ) so this is my kinda review –
Here’s a couple things – the sound is definitely louder, spotify have an equaliser and on their highest audio setting there’s not that much difference to be noticed in the quality( well not enough for 20 euro ) IMO , the next thing is the user interface is better with spotify especially on laptops, and the other thing I noticed that annoyed me was that they listed all the songs for artists including those that are not actually available to play on tidal – which I found annoying Finally I found minor issue with the streaming glitch ing (more that Normal with Spotify but just enough to irritate that I’m paying 20 quid and when I want to listen most there were delays –
The big diff is the quality , I used beats headphones and there is a good quality on tidal , but spotify is getting better all the time and ultimately I decided to switch and stay using them for now , they are half the price and when out and about with beats headphones the audio quality is good enough for me
@Dave
To be fair you had me until you said you were using beats headphones. Hard to talk about the sound quality of the music when you’re using those to listen.
I agree Bill. Sennheiser are the industry standard. I’ve been using HD-25′s for years for gigs and studio and the sound quality is above and beyond their competitors.Made in Ireland too!
@Dave Hammond. The whole comparing Spotify to Tidal isnt about how loud songs can get. If that was the case, it would be a pretty simple to win that battle. The whole idea is about music quality. I have been using Spotify for years now and to be honest, I cant fault it, at all. For my work I would never use it because of its mp3 quality but for listening to music while on the go or in the car, its ideal. The majority of the people who listen to music will be listening to it from their phone, through fairly cheap ear buds which wont pass quality audio anyway, much like Beats. Like Mr Dave said, compare the two companies quality through headphones like HD25′s and see what you think. If you want quality audio from start to finish you have to have quality equipment to do the job.
I agree , just to be clear I wasn’t trying to compare for loudness – I was merely pointing out that it was a noticeable difference when I tried tidal they play louder compare to spotify ( I’m guessing they market this as better audio to the masses ) in relation to the headphones I just wanted to share that I had used the same headphones for both tidal and spotify for the comparison , most of the differences were the same through my home audio ( Bose )- itd be good for a proper audio engineer to test the two services and publish the findings and actual differences between the two streaming services
Dr dre and his team apparently use sennheissers in their studio sessions. Says a lot about beats.
Spotify @320kbps is pretty damn good.
You need a decent DAC too…
Stupid me , thanks for the tip , the article was about tidal and i thought I’d share how I had found the service for the past month , when out and about particularly running (I happen to find the in-ear beats are fine for lightweight mobile use ) the audiophiles seemed upset at that but anyway
for the average reader my comment was really just to discuss the new tidal streaming service and compare to spotify , it wasn’t a recommendation on the best audio setup or headphones around – but thanks again
Can tidal save music? Yes it can, if they ditch people like jay z, rihanna,lady gaga and all the other disposable dumbed down shite that passes for ‘music’ today.
Go away with this Tidal shite. You have enough articles about it already.
If I buy an album these days it’s either off bandcamp or on vinyl. Paying for streaming is something I can’t get my head around, I stopped renting movies years ago and I’m not going to take up renting music now.
Ehhhh thanks but no thanks. You’re about a decade too late.
Christ, Madonna. Your efforts to stay relevant are getting more and more embarrassing. This whole thing just makes me want to go back to pirating music. I’ll stick with Spotify.
Just use YouTube
Bono and the rest of the Illuminati surely are involved ?
Jay Z acquired Tidal earlier this year for $56 million, Subscriptions start at $9.99 for standard quality audio, or $19.99 a month to stream high-fidelity16-bit FLAC digital audio files.
Tidal only has around 17,000 paid subscribers (http://www.aspiro.com/aspiro-group/press/press-releases/?title=aspiro-reports-user-numbers-for-january&cision-id=976270) Spotify on the other hand, just reached 15 million. Taylor Swift recently removed her music from Spotify because she did not believe it was fair that artists were not being paid royalties, She has allowed Tidal permission to stream her music.
Surely the stream quality is only obvious when it is played through high end audio equipment, most people use basic headphones, speaker systems and phones, iPads etc. the difference we are being asked to believe is worth the money will be unnoticed by the majority.
Referencing Gawker immediately drains any article of credibility.
I fail to see how a small reference to how another site covered a press launch somehow ‘drains’ a 1000 word article of its ‘credibility’, Shane.
Gawker is the Sunday World of online media: http://m.imgur.com/gallery/CQ5qgvu
Chris martin , cock nose
I can see this grow and in time a lot more of the bigger musicians following Taylor Swift and moving their music away from Spotify and buying into Tidal.
Personally I like Spotify and use it a lot in the car, every day in fact. At 5.99 from Vodafone, it’s hard to beat.
No surprise all the artists involved primarily make (or made) their bones off single sales and own their own labels. This sort of dinosaur mentality is surely dying off. Lots of upcoming and established bands and genuine artists have embraced sharing content on streaming services for the past decade because it gets people to their shows, where the ones with actual talent have always earned their keep. Most of them (except the multi-platinum sellers) made very little of the sales traditionally, which usually ended up in the pockets of the suits anyway.
A vision to change the status quo, brought to you by the status quo.
This is going to be like beats headphones, where they take something crappy have a load of famous people back it then people lap it up and say it the best thing ever and think they are cool because they use it.
Spotify has it nailed..
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