This shyt doesn't look good, brehs. It's a factual article, and presents a lot of the challenges tidal is facing, and some alleged shady practices.
its a long, but interesting read.
David Turner
Today 8:45am
https://gizmodo.com/how-tidal-got-so-fukked-1826870560
“If I gave two fukks - two fukks about streaming numbers, would have put Lemonade up on Spotify,” Beyoncé proclaims on “NICE” from her joint album with Jay-Z which they dropped exclusively on Tidal over the weekend. Unfortunately for those emotionally or monetarily invested in the streaming service, your sudden need to download Tidal quickly dissipated when by Monday morning, Everything Is Love could be found on Apple Music and Spotify’s paid tier.
When Tidal’s most public-facing owners can’t survive more than 48 hours in a Tidal-only world, what could’ve gone so wrong with the company? Even the heirs to Prince’s estate are looking to terminate a recently announced deal between Tidal and the deceased singer, TMZ reported on Tuesday. Tidal wanted to save the music industry, and instead, it’s losing exclusives and right now stands accused of fudging subscriber numbers, manipulating streaming numbers, providing late payment to labels, and in some cases not paying artists at all. (Some of which, Tidal vehemently denies.) Problems began from the start with the company.
Three years ago, Jay-Z, one of the world’s most successful rappers, publicly debuted Tidal alongside a who’s who of music’s power players, including Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Daft Punk, Madonna, Rihanna, and Kanye West—who despite public bluster is still invested. Jay-Z pitched his music streaming company against the likes of Apple, Spotify, and YouTube—tech companies the music industry routinely found ways to blame for their own industry’s short failings. The constant complaints leveled against these billion-dollar corporations was that artists weren’t being fairly compensated for their work. The dollars that used to be made from CDs and even digital downloads shrunk down to fractions of pennies per individual song streams. Alicia Keys, one of the signers, in her rallying cry for the freshly rebranded company described Tidal as “the first ever artist-owned global music and entertainment platform.” Without a free option and in fact by offering a premium, higher audio quality mode, Tidal proposed that you should pay it to stream music and feel good about it, too.
“Will artists make more money? Even if it means less profit for our bottom line, absolutely,” Jay-Z boldly asserted to Billboard back in 2015. “Less profit for our bottom line, more money for the artist; fantastic. Let’s do that today.” No longer were major labels going to hold all the power in the music industry, nor would aloof tech companies; no, this new era belongs to artists. The issue that appeared in this utopian vision is that music’s ruling class weren’t always looking out for those underneath them.
Dagens Naeringsliv, a Norwegian newspaper that sits diligently on the Tidal beat, reported in May that the company allegedly falsified streaming numbers for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo and Beyoncé’s Lemonade. The newspaper partnered with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Center for Cyber and Information Security, which concluded that over 90 percent of Tidal users saw manipulated listening stats and that the company logged over 300 million fraudulent streams for the two artists. Tidal vehemently denied the claims, but in the 78-page report, the center concluded that it’d be highly unlikely for this level of data manipulation to occur from outside of the company. While it was a scandalous report, such claims are not outside of the ordinary for Tidal since Jay-Z’s purchase.
Tidal’s lofty artist-first aspirations
Months prior to Jay-Z’s entry into the music streaming market, another music superstar shook music streaming’s still-feeble foundation. Taylor Swift published a 2014 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where she championed the traditional album format and engaging with one’s fans while dismissing music streaming: “Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently,” she wrote. Far from an outlier opinion, artists from Swift to Radiohead’s front man Thom Yorke have spoken profusely about their displeasure with Spotify. Swift took it the next level by pulling her catalog from the service, suggesting that artists with enough clout could enter this new age on their own terms.
Jay-Z pitched Tidal to musicians as well as fans an opportunity to embrace this new future without feelings like they were turning backs on their favorite artists. In April 2015, Jay-Z tweeted that Tidal would offer 75 percent royalties for artists, producers, and songwriters. However, Eric Harvey, an assistant professor at Grand Valley State University and frequent music commentator told NPR: “These are the one percent of pop music artists in the world right now...While technically they are performing the same sorts of labor as independent musicians are, they’re doing so at a fairly radically different scale.” Harvey observed that despite the big talk, this service potentially might only serve those powerful enough to stand next to Jay-Z on stage.
Tidal was born from Jay-Z’s March 2015 purchase of Aspiro, the Norway-based company behind the European music streaming service WiMP and Tidal. The mogul wanted to break into the emerging streaming music space and conveniently beat to market Apple’s soon-to-launch Apple Music. Shortly after the company’s purchase, Asprio’s CEO Andy Chen left, kicking off a number of high profile executive exits from the company. Despite the c-suite turnover, Jay-Z announced via tweet in September that one million people were using the service without clarifying if this was paying subscribers, trial accounts mixed with subscribers, or what. The numbers put Tidal significantly behind Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify, but there appeared to still be growth for the young streaming service.
Tidal hit 2016 running by partnering with one of its investors, Rihanna, on the release of Anti, the pop star’s most recent album, by offering one million free downloads that arrived with a Tidal trial. The company repeated a similar exclusive strategy with Kanye West’s The Life of Pabloand Beyoncé’s Lemonade—again another pair of artists who invested in the company. The New York Times reported that Lemonade alone added 1.2 million subscribers to Tidal, potentially putting the company at 4.2 million subscribers; in April 2016, Apple Music’s global reported user base was 13 million and Spotify’s was near 100 million, according to an industry source. Jay-Z and his crew of pop gods created at least on paper a small, but growing, music streaming service.
its a long, but interesting read.
David Turner
Today 8:45am
https://gizmodo.com/how-tidal-got-so-fukked-1826870560
“If I gave two fukks - two fukks about streaming numbers, would have put Lemonade up on Spotify,” Beyoncé proclaims on “NICE” from her joint album with Jay-Z which they dropped exclusively on Tidal over the weekend. Unfortunately for those emotionally or monetarily invested in the streaming service, your sudden need to download Tidal quickly dissipated when by Monday morning, Everything Is Love could be found on Apple Music and Spotify’s paid tier.
When Tidal’s most public-facing owners can’t survive more than 48 hours in a Tidal-only world, what could’ve gone so wrong with the company? Even the heirs to Prince’s estate are looking to terminate a recently announced deal between Tidal and the deceased singer, TMZ reported on Tuesday. Tidal wanted to save the music industry, and instead, it’s losing exclusives and right now stands accused of fudging subscriber numbers, manipulating streaming numbers, providing late payment to labels, and in some cases not paying artists at all. (Some of which, Tidal vehemently denies.) Problems began from the start with the company.
Three years ago, Jay-Z, one of the world’s most successful rappers, publicly debuted Tidal alongside a who’s who of music’s power players, including Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Daft Punk, Madonna, Rihanna, and Kanye West—who despite public bluster is still invested. Jay-Z pitched his music streaming company against the likes of Apple, Spotify, and YouTube—tech companies the music industry routinely found ways to blame for their own industry’s short failings. The constant complaints leveled against these billion-dollar corporations was that artists weren’t being fairly compensated for their work. The dollars that used to be made from CDs and even digital downloads shrunk down to fractions of pennies per individual song streams. Alicia Keys, one of the signers, in her rallying cry for the freshly rebranded company described Tidal as “the first ever artist-owned global music and entertainment platform.” Without a free option and in fact by offering a premium, higher audio quality mode, Tidal proposed that you should pay it to stream music and feel good about it, too.
“Will artists make more money? Even if it means less profit for our bottom line, absolutely,” Jay-Z boldly asserted to Billboard back in 2015. “Less profit for our bottom line, more money for the artist; fantastic. Let’s do that today.” No longer were major labels going to hold all the power in the music industry, nor would aloof tech companies; no, this new era belongs to artists. The issue that appeared in this utopian vision is that music’s ruling class weren’t always looking out for those underneath them.
Dagens Naeringsliv, a Norwegian newspaper that sits diligently on the Tidal beat, reported in May that the company allegedly falsified streaming numbers for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo and Beyoncé’s Lemonade. The newspaper partnered with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Center for Cyber and Information Security, which concluded that over 90 percent of Tidal users saw manipulated listening stats and that the company logged over 300 million fraudulent streams for the two artists. Tidal vehemently denied the claims, but in the 78-page report, the center concluded that it’d be highly unlikely for this level of data manipulation to occur from outside of the company. While it was a scandalous report, such claims are not outside of the ordinary for Tidal since Jay-Z’s purchase.
Tidal’s lofty artist-first aspirations
Months prior to Jay-Z’s entry into the music streaming market, another music superstar shook music streaming’s still-feeble foundation. Taylor Swift published a 2014 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where she championed the traditional album format and engaging with one’s fans while dismissing music streaming: “Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently,” she wrote. Far from an outlier opinion, artists from Swift to Radiohead’s front man Thom Yorke have spoken profusely about their displeasure with Spotify. Swift took it the next level by pulling her catalog from the service, suggesting that artists with enough clout could enter this new age on their own terms.
Jay-Z pitched Tidal to musicians as well as fans an opportunity to embrace this new future without feelings like they were turning backs on their favorite artists. In April 2015, Jay-Z tweeted that Tidal would offer 75 percent royalties for artists, producers, and songwriters. However, Eric Harvey, an assistant professor at Grand Valley State University and frequent music commentator told NPR: “These are the one percent of pop music artists in the world right now...While technically they are performing the same sorts of labor as independent musicians are, they’re doing so at a fairly radically different scale.” Harvey observed that despite the big talk, this service potentially might only serve those powerful enough to stand next to Jay-Z on stage.
Tidal was born from Jay-Z’s March 2015 purchase of Aspiro, the Norway-based company behind the European music streaming service WiMP and Tidal. The mogul wanted to break into the emerging streaming music space and conveniently beat to market Apple’s soon-to-launch Apple Music. Shortly after the company’s purchase, Asprio’s CEO Andy Chen left, kicking off a number of high profile executive exits from the company. Despite the c-suite turnover, Jay-Z announced via tweet in September that one million people were using the service without clarifying if this was paying subscribers, trial accounts mixed with subscribers, or what. The numbers put Tidal significantly behind Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify, but there appeared to still be growth for the young streaming service.
Tidal hit 2016 running by partnering with one of its investors, Rihanna, on the release of Anti, the pop star’s most recent album, by offering one million free downloads that arrived with a Tidal trial. The company repeated a similar exclusive strategy with Kanye West’s The Life of Pabloand Beyoncé’s Lemonade—again another pair of artists who invested in the company. The New York Times reported that Lemonade alone added 1.2 million subscribers to Tidal, potentially putting the company at 4.2 million subscribers; in April 2016, Apple Music’s global reported user base was 13 million and Spotify’s was near 100 million, according to an industry source. Jay-Z and his crew of pop gods created at least on paper a small, but growing, music streaming service.
. And why would Tidal pay money to labels for fake subscribers? Doesn't make any sense as most companies would just refuse to report the numbers. Corporate America 101. I mean just like Microsoft doesn't report Xbox sales numbers cuz they loosing to PS4 and Nintendo but no one gives them shyt for it. Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify have yet to turn a profit and yet no one blinks an eye. Get off Tidal dikk