I fukks with Jay, but I'm not stupid. He's trying to co-opt the press on Tidal and turn it into a Big Man vs. Little man, underdog, black vs. white type of rap feud. He's trying to politic the narrative and make it about the evil white corporation vs. the poor black hustler from Marcy trying to fight the system.
No Jay. You got caught being greedy and out of touch. You don't get to "come home" and make it a hip-hop thing. You don't get to trot Sigel out on stage under the guise of being that relatable dude that's about us.
This ain't about slavery, this ain't about Mike Brown, you don't get to make a martyr of yourself by mentioning those things when it's convenient. The nerve of using those terms while promoting a service that's all about charging more of my hard earned money to provide an inferior product and line your pockets.
You compete with Spotify by providing a better service or a cheaper service, like anything else in the market.
Exactly.
Bad business decisions were made by him and his business team. There are conflicting messages all over the place here. His mission seemed to be about providing a better outlet of music for artists and promoted this to consumers - when this is a consumer product, this is of little relevancy.
He then at the same time tried to promote a higher quality product (lossless format) going in direct competition with Spotify etc at a higher price-point. He misread his audience; people are still new to paying for music and would not want to fork out any more for what many feel is already a quality service they are being provided by Spotify.
He could have done the following:
- Undercut or match Spotify with a superior service (lossless) at $10 or less
- Provide better perks for users, i.e. Tidal roster provide a calendar of exclusive material every week (e.g. beyonce week, daft punk week etc).
Instead he has rushed this and he resulted to hip hop disses to billion dollar companies which on the whole changed music for the better. This isn't hip hop. He's going against highly intellectual businessmen, Stanford grads and tech entrepeuners; seems like he's hired very poorly too...


