It seems like overnight TIDAL became a household name. The streaming company squares off with competitors like Spotify, Google and soon Apple. It’s toted as a home for high-fidelity audio and exclusive content … nothing too strange. But that’s not what makes it different.
What makes it unique is that a majority of the company will be owned by artists. And not just any group of artists. The crème of the crop in their respective genres: Beyonce, Rihanna, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, J. Cole, Usher, Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire (Win Butler and Régine Chassagne), Calvin Harris, Chris Martin, Daft Punk, DeadMau5, Jack White, Jason Aldean and of course the owner – Hov. And unlike Spotify, this streaming service will offer no free tier of music.
As the story goes, Hov purchased it for a cool $56 million in March and now – just a month later – it’s valued at $250 million. Not bad. TIDAL claims to have signed up 100,000 subscribers since the infamous 16 artists joined Jay Z on stage, according to industry sources.
But has it convinced the remaining millions of listeners?
Well we asked 99 music lovers if the exclusive material and high fidelity streaming service of TIDAL was enough for the subscription. For once I’m not surprised by the results.
Ninety-one percent of music lovers said they weren’t quite convinced.
Most made the point of questioning why they would pay for music that currently existed on airwaves for free. Good point….
To understand TIDAL, you really have to understand the frustration that it was born from. Taylor Swift summarized it best in a recent interview on why she removed her catalog from Spotify.
“I’m always up for trying something. And I tried it and I didn’t like the way it felt. I think there should be an inherent value placed on art.
“I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify. Everybody’s complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things. They keep running towards streaming, which is, for the most part, what has been shrinking the numbers of paid album sales.
“With Beats Music and Rhapsody you have to pay for a premium package in order to access my albums. And that places a perception of value on what I’ve created. On Spotify, they don’t have any settings, or any kind of qualifications for who gets what music. I think that people should feel that there is a value to what musicians have created, and that’s that. I wrote about this in July, I wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. This shouldn’t be news right now. It should have been news in July when I went out and stood up and said I’m against it. And so this is really kind of an old story.”
And there lies the problem. Completing an album takes thousands of dollars – in some cases millions. However, that collection of work can be accessed in places like Spotify free, thus placing no value on the music.
Spotify says it pays 70% of its revenue to labels — which will amount to about $1 billion this year — but some artists feel they don’t get a big enough cut. The streaming service revealed last year that it paid record labels an average of less than a penny per play, and that’s just the money going to labels, not the artists.
A great example of this can be seen with Pharrell and John Legend.
Through the first three months of 2014, “Happy” was streamed 43 million times on Pandora, while “All Of Me” was played 55 million times on the service.
But how much money did all those streams make for the artists involved in creating the tracks?
According to an email from music publisher Sony/ATV head Martin Bandier obtained by Digital Music News’ Paul Resnikoff, “Happy” brought in just $2,700 in publisher and songwriter royalties in the first quarter of this year, while “All Of Me” yielded just $3,400 in publisher and songwriter royalties.
Said this way, it’s all starting to make sense. However, there’s no denying that the public isn’t necessarily there yet. There’s still confusion of what TIDAL is. That said… are TIDAL artists ready to take on that journey?
Sure, they give the subscription service growing attention, but the artists have to weight the tradeoff of being absent from far more popular services (Currently TIDAL only accounts for 5% of streaming services).
Most notably Rihanna who has a highly anticipated album set to hit shelves any day now. Will she want to gamble with the success of her new album on TIDAL?
Experts believe that exclusive streaming on TIDAL could hurt artists. Nicki Minaj’s “Truffle Butter” would have dropped from No. 15 to No. 19 on the April 11th Hot 100 chart, according to a Billboard analysis. Beyonce’s “7/11″ would have lost eight places, going from No. 44 to No. 52; Drake’s “Know Yourself” would have suffered more precipitously, descending from No. 57 to straight off the Hot 100; and Kanye West’s “All Day” would drop from No. 62 to No. 84.
Despite all that could go wrong, Hov and team are moving forward and they have large companies like Spring backing them. Sprint is preparing to offer Tidal’s service on its phones although the details and the pricing are unclear. A Sprint store manager in Manhattan told The Post he would have more details on the rollout in the next few weeks, adding that “there may be some specials,” or promotions.
Good or bad, looks like TIDAL is ready to put up a long fight.
4/2015
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