Tidal Makes Waves through the Music Industry

Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Madonna, and Beyoncé stand together for Tidal’s opening

Hip/Hop’s most ambitious business mogul, Jay-Z has just acquired, through his company, Project Panther Bidco, the Swedish tech-firm, Aspiro, for $56 million on March 13th. This acquisition will allot Mr. Carter WiMP and Tidal, two music streaming services that require a monthly fee (as low as $9.99/month - $19.99/month). Sound familiar? Shawn Carter Enterprises will now be able to compete with other services like Dre’s Beats Music, Spotify, Google Play, and Rhapsody.

This was after the minority shareholders of the company were considering rejecting his offer, on terms of lack of clarity with Jay’s plans to take expansion internationally. However, was immediately accepted by the senior executive majority shareholders upon its offer, and advised others to do the same.

As of recent updates, Aspiro has up to 512,000 paying subscribers, so that poses the question what will happen once it reaches America’s interface under new management? Well seemingly enough, it appears it will take over everything.

Artists such as: Kanye West, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, Usher and Jay’s beloved Beyoncé started support for the new streaming service by switching their twitter profile pictures to blue. Also supporting is Alicia Keys, Calvin Harris, Jack White, Jaden Smith, Arcade Fire, Jason Aldean, and Coldplay in order to raise backing for this newly purchased Tidal and its opening on Monday, March 30.

Taylor Swift’s album is among others that was released on Monday, promising listeners “high fidelity” sound quality, high definition video, and editorials as well. Also, Rihanna’s album was rumored to be released on the service as well, but she refuted the absurdity with a tweet that read, “LIES!!”, with an attached link to a false story by Vice’s fashion culture sect, i-D.

Jay-Z called for a press conference at 5pm Eastern Time Monday at the James A. Farley Post Office in New York, to discuss his future plans and ideologies for the future of the company and the music industry itself. The artists above including Daft Punk were in attendance to the conference. Scheduled to only be 17 minutes, TechCrunch reports, “the company will be using the event to confirm the big-name artists to stream music exclusively on the Tidal platform.”

The big appeal to Tidal and the reputation it is trying to build is the exclusive rights to artist’s music first, before services like Spotify and others. This means Tidal would be the first stop for each of these artist’s fans when it comes to new music, making Tidal the number one go-to for new releases. Similarly, Diddy is trying to implement the same type of stigma for his own platform, Revolt, which is a music cable network created by and for “this generation”, according to their website. In addition, to the exclusive releases, Tidal will try to payout artists more than their competitors. Seeing that the service charges almost double than most platforms, Tidal may be able to follow through with such a generous offer.

As for the customer appeal, Business Insider noted that Tidal’s CEO, Andy Cohen, announced that “curated playlists and editorials will be a huge factor in the popularity of the site.” Jay-Z announced Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj will run their own playlists as well. In actuality, this may entice many listeners to Tidal if they’re able to know/listen to what their favorite artists are listening to.

Tidal’s convincing attempt to inspire viewers during the press conference was an emphasis on how vital music is to us, and how much better an “artist owned” service is compared to other monopolized platforms. Basically, telling us all how much we need to subscribe to Tidal, but it gets better. The meeting started with an audio/visual lesson of the history of music, a welcoming into the “future of music”, along with a roll call of each A-list artist as they entered the stage:

In order of appearance:

• Alicia Keys

• Arcade Fire (Win Butler, Régine Chassagne)

• Beyoncé

• Daft Punk

• Jack White

• Calvin Harris (virtually on screen)

• Chris Martin (virtually on screen)

• Jason Aldean

• J. Cole

• Jay-Z

• Kanye West

• Deadmau5

• Madonna

• Nicki Minaj

• Rihanna

• Usher

Alicia Keys commenced the portion of the conference with an introductory speech explaining Tidal’s outlook and overall vision. Keys noted, “Our mission goes beyond commerce, it goes beyond technology. Our intent is to preserve music’s importance in our lives.” She reaffirms that Tidal’s intent is one that contrasts every other music outlet to date, which so far proves to be so. If you remember when Beats Music came out, the backing came from ads like ones that depicted Run D.M.C., Rev Run, and their families discussing AT&T’s Beats Music family plans. With Tidal however, we see music’s power heads coming together to promote a platform they personally co-own, advocate, and use themselves, which bridges yet another gap between music fans and their idols.

Whether these artists really are in it for the music and not the money is yet to be seen, but from what Monday’s meeting showed these artists are motivated to bring a premier platform.

Considering the steep price, is it audacious for these artist’s to think most of America will pay $20 a month for Tidal’s elite services? Time will tell as the platform enters the U.S. air waves, but if the only thing Tidal can truly promise is exclusive rights to music first, it may not be worth it to the independent music fan. However, for anyone who follows mainstream music and trends, it is becoming clearer that Tidal is going to be the service you’ll need.

Before leaving, take note that with Tidal’s beautiful, high quality streaming there is no ownership of the music that comes along with the subscription, but simply just the streaming! So make sure you have tangible backups, and not just highly-priced streamed songs or illegal downloads, something lots of people should learn these days.

#tidal #jayz #kanyewest #aliciakeys #rihanna #daftpunk