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The growing consensus is that Tidal, the streaming service that Jay Z purchased and rebranded this year, has stumbled out of the gate. The star-studded press conference announcing the service was a misstep and the reported subscription numbers to this point have been dismal. But that’s not the truth according to Jay, who hopped on his rarely used Twitter account to let the world know that Tidal is doing just fine.
First an announcement that he’s going to tweet, because this is Jay Z:
Then, an update on subscriber numbers:
Then Jay asks the public for patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day ya’know:
Then a word for the haters:
And some more explanation of how Tidal is for the fans (and the artists):
Then Hov digs into one of the more common misconceptions (according to him) about Tidal — That it’s just a money grab for a bunch of people that are already ridiculously rich:
And he lets you know that this is serious business, his cousin even went to Nigeria:
And Jay makes his closing statements:
That’s all fine and dandy. Jay wants to make a statement to his fans and detractors, cool. But that doesn’t do anything to assuage any concerns that consumers may have with the service. It costs too much, the end. It also doesn’t address its most critical issue: piracy. The faux exclusivity is the inherent flaw of the service, and that was supposed to be its biggest selling point.
Jay Z may mean well and his partners may be “determined,” but unless they figure out a way to keep their exclusives exclusive, rumors of its demise won’t be exaggerated at all. They’ll be fact.
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And the internet is now responding predictably.
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He’s got 99 problems and music stream is one.
Never understood why ppl said it failed after only a month! Pretty sure Jay pissed off some powerful white ppl and they are the ones behind the “tidal is failing” news. What company in the history of business was successful after one month?
Is this Memphis Bleek typing?
the number of ppl who were cheering on the supposed Tidal trainwreck while unconcerned that Spotify and others pay artists a pittance & make execs rich is ridiculous
@Ans: The Fresh Prince of Belmont I think the levels of grandiose obnoxiousness during its marketing and launch are what really killed Tidal’s true meaning.
If your seeking negativity, open Twitter or scroll down to Youtube’s comment section
*Facebook
If by succeed, Jay means “turn a profit,” Spotify has never succeeded. That’s the whole problem.
“My cousin just moved to Nigeria to discover new talent…. he’ll be emailing you shortly”
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But seriously was it “rich white people” who forced Tidal to absolutely bitch their release. First they marketed themselves as a premium service, of course that failedc. Only an asshole would pay twice as much for a service their completely satisfied with. Now their playing the “artists card”. Their pretentious commercials are obnoxious, and that press conference with Madonna acting like she signed the Declaration of Independence was even more obnoxious.And if jay-z is such a great business, man. Why would he enter an already crowded marketplace so late in the game. It’s almost like he’s a rapper who only made money off his fame and has no actual idea how a buisness works
Because they’re “determined” doesn’t mean much if their competitors are significantly cheaper to consumers. And being the competition or being a customer who chooses the competing service doesn’t make anyone a “hater”,]. Pointing out that Tidal’s business plans sucks dead donkey balls is merely a statement of fact.
Not everyone wants to use spotify or Pandora each of these companies have pros and cons
Pandora – the user doesn’t haven’t complete control on what can be played
Spotify – you can’t listen to spotify on multiple devices unless you go offline
Tidal – there music quality is shit however it’s the experience is for people who are fans of the 16 artist that backed tidal.
Those are my biggest beefs with each one. Having said that tidal can find it’s place why because there was a time where no one even recognized spotify. As long as Tidal focuses on giving users features that spotify and Pandora lack they will be fine. Also tidal.pays the artist more than the other two so that’s a huge as well. All in all it takes time and in 3 – 5 years you will know if tidal is a failure or not
I’d just like to add my two cents. I’ve been a tidal user before the Jay Z majority ownership and was quite impressed by the fidelity. No I don’t have a 100k stereo setup at home but I have a pair of high end AKGs and all my favorite songs have a much more distinct sound than the meddling of downsampling even on extreme spotify quality. The only downsides I have with tidal right now are its lack of music compared to the bigger guys aka iTunes and spotify. I’m sure the catalog will grow considerably. As a person who is not homeless due to an extra $10 a month for full tidal hifi it’s worth it if you enjoy the highest quality (save for an offline stereo quality storage medium) tidal is very much a 4/5. Really depends on if the company can influence customers’ taste more so than their stalwart counterparts.
Tidal is $19.99/month.
There is a $10 option in additional to their $20 option.
@Jones Soda
I guess I figured someone wouldn’t pay for the non-hifi version of Tidal…. considering that was the selling point for the thing.
To clarify my $10 extra / month is in reference to paying for spotify at $9.99 or Tidal at $19.99.
Tidal’s still $20 b.
Should have said all this at the press conference, rather tell the ppl why it benefits you.
Yes, it has 770k subscribers when they haven’t been around for a month yet. Because the free trial is one month. We’ll see how far that number drops once everybody cancels the their trials.
good Point
And apparently the service that it used to be that he bought and renamed already had 500k + subscribers, so his number is even less impressive.
Why is this dude so insecure
Hahaha, Tidal sucks.
“Niggas wake up on my dick eat some breakfast first”
No businessman would say otherwise but will it really hurt Jay should it fail?
TIDAL’s got 6 big problems that I don’t know how Jay or any artist overcomes.
#1 – Streaming pays artists crap.
Artist make $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream. That’s just not worth it for any artist—you need SMASH HITS just to make this arrangement worthwhile to artists.
#2 – Streaming is not only decreasing, but it’s increasing.
People love streaming. it frees up harddrive space. And as long as Bandwith stays cheap people will keep choosing streaming over buying music outright. As a result, Artists are being forced to adapt to streaming whether they want to or not.
#3 – the only way for artists to profit equitably off of streaming is to own a streaming service themselves.
#4 – Cultural Bias.
People love Steve Jobs setting .99 cent price for music.( That screwed a lot of artists—crap song or great song, still $.99 at most.) People love the creators of Spotify, Pandora etc. We hail them as innovators eventho their inventions largely reduce the value of music and how much artists can make off their music.
People love Taylor Swift fighting Spotify. We loved Pearl Jam fighting Ticketmaster…
Conversely when Prince fought Warner Bros and we called him a clown. We called him worse for fighting piracy of his music and deciding he should make more off his music than anyone else. We deride Jay as a crass opportunist. When more mainstream artist try to get in on the action, we don’t ridicule them. we make ignore them, but we rarely ridicule them.
If the face of the TIDAL launch had been Daft Punk, Lady Gaga, Mumford & Sons, One Direction or Taylor Swift instead of Jay-Z/Kanye/Beyonce the masses wouldn’t be ridiculing it. They’d understand the need for TIDAL even if they chose not to buy it.
#6 We are thieves.
Me, you. Your boy. Your girl. Your folks. Probably your pastor… We’d all rather steal music than pay for it. We’ve tricked ourselves into believing “music wants to be free” like “information wants to be free”. We want artists to be artists, make great stuff, then we want it for free.
This just isn’t sustainable. Plus it exacerbates the problem of artists trying to figure out how to make money off their art when legit revenue streams of selling the music get muffled.
If this was ’98-2005, I would agree with #6. But its 2015. I don’t think my pastor is searching for Rhianna or Katy Perry torrent files.
Ebooks? Yeah.
Porn? maybe.
But music? Slim chance…
I know we want to believe that there are a million Jay-Zs and Taylor Swifts just waiting to revive the industry but we have to be honest… a lot of new music is just plain average.
Like some people pointed out earlier this week, there is more music readily available than ever before. There’s a ton of entertainment options now compared to the scarce amount of options available pre-internet. Add to that the prices going up and mobile devices adding exponential more options everyday, musicians can only expect more competition. And if people keep playing the same Michael Jackson, Megadeth, Garth Brooks, Lil Wayne, etc. music that they already have while keeping their money in their pocket, i’m not mad at them.
If Jay-Z wants to sell a service with new music, I truly wish him well. But getting this generation to pay money for average music instead of video games, movies, ebooks, cell phone bills, necessities, etc., will be a serious challenge.
Now that you brought it up, you’re right about cultural bias. I wonder about the reason though. Smear campaign by competitors? Racism? I’ll have to keep that in mind when reading further news about Tidal.
I just don’t get why if it’s so shitty, ya’ll feel the need to point that out all the time. There has been a ridic amount of articles bashing it. Let the market sort that shit out. It really does seem like you (@bansky @tsscrew, etc) have an agenda against it. It’s probably nothing more than searching for clicks, but still STFU already.
Check this guy out.
You hurt?
feeling a certain way?
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@MykeWayne @County of Kings lmao I was feeling a type of way. One article is cool, don’t need one thousand
gotta love the internet… they’re like the talking heads on fox noise.
haters hating for the sake of nothing.
i think the premise of the company is good, if what he says is true… the whole piracy argument is a fallacy, since itunes and spotify are profitable ventures in the same climate. i don’t think tidal exists to defeat piracy… if that’s the goal, then they failed before they ever started.
also, jay z has to know this business model is not for mass consumption, it’s for true fans who care enough to pay for it. the average person (like me) doesn’t care enough about artists, music or any other form of entertainment to shell out a monthly fee for any of this.
It’s actually not pricey (to me) when you go with the $10 plan. They should of marketed the standard cost more heavily, and not the premium. I think this could work really well if they added some things as well as improving how the app works. (It’s paused on me a few times and it’s not the most intuitive app I’ve used.) I downloaded it because I looked up how much the streaming app I used pays artists and it’s not as bad as Spotify but still not great.
Google Music allows you to transfer your entire library and although I have some songs that are difficult to match/find ….it’s gotten the bulk of it and I’d want that with Tidal. I hate having to find and rediscover everything again. Also seeing shit I’d never willing listen to when I open the app. They should boasts the biggest music library eventually, so I hope that’s coming since this is geared to artists and fans alike..
Agreed, RE: the $10 plan. I haven’t tried Google Music yet though.
770k subs when Tidal has been out less than a month? First month is a free trial, so…yeah, way too premature to call it ‘fine’. I guess they hired a marketing department competent enough to at least spin in a way that fools the idiots.
Let’s see what those numbers are like in month 2 and 3, and if they’re increasing beyond the free month for new subs.
It will simply not be sustainable enough to be successful.
A major reason being that we are offering the new Beats/iTunes service this summer (early fall). Same direction – which is why Jay jumped – he got wind and wanted to do it first.
1. You cannot compete with Apple money unless you are Google, Microsoft, etc. It simply is not possible. I can literally outbid anyone Tidal might even think of going after with what I have by way of budget.
2. The new service was always going to come this summer, however, Jay benefited us tremendously – he exposed the dislikes of consumers and flaws of the service that will eventually sink the ship by his own Tidal wave doing.
3. The exclusivity at Apple is not nearly as constrictive and we are not tied to just looking to offer deals to the ridiculous “cool kids table” (in which Madonna put her leg upon).
Future Prediction: What Jay is going to do (in order to make this seem like far less of a failure) is sell it off or merge it with another company – specifically in the technology sector (it will be valuable to someone as Silicon Valley always gives inflated valuations). He will make profit (from the acquisition), not be remembered for the countless mistakes he made with Tidal, and walk away with a false win.
If success means making a profit from the above scenario, rather than the model and what it offers, well then, he will have succeeded. But we all know Jay would like to walk away with billions rather than millions.
However, Tidal will never be profitable. I got a look at the numbers before he purchased (with the new plans) and could only shake my head. He has been rich for too long. I saw a lot of wasted money. They could not even get the royalty structure correct (it is based upon profitability – which means it fluctuates depending upon the success of the service) and the exclusivity killed the profit margins.
Apple may have a lot more money to utilize, but best believe just because they have it, does not mean they are unnecessarily spending it.
I like Jay. Do not get me wrong. But unlike Kanye… I [de]sided with Dre. There is a reason why he made so much money – it was not luck or trend – it was planning. His patience (as always) paid off. Had Jay had more patience, well, 20/20.
I could tell Jay, in less than 5 minutes, how to make it successful (and success to me = profitability in this area). The problem is, he will not listen. This is what you get for attempting to take an incomplete idea… and make it work.
#IknowyouwillseethisShawn
#Pridecomethbeforeafall
Additionally, Jay’s problem is that he has behaved like a king for far too long. It looks terrible to “come down and mingle with the ‘peasants’,” to simply give an explanation of why you really have not failed. Whomever advised that should be beheaded – I mean, lit on fire (GoT), I mean, fired (terminated).
I am telling you, everyone makes mistakes, and he is making his due to panic.
How many people does he follow on social media – on Twitter, the outlet he utilized to “tell” everyone that he is still winning? Those are the exact sort of moves that cause automatic dislike. I am not saying I dislike him at all – I am pointing to human nature. Only talk to the regular folk and fans when you need to? That is not how you win in 2015. You either engage… or you do not (at all). The people who voted you in do not like to be ignored. They do not like to feel beneath you (even if they indeed are).
Now, if you made Curren$y, Nipsey Hussle, Duckworth, Radiohead – even his own (Jermaine)… one of those artists/groups/acts, the face, people would love it because they see themselves. They see interaction. They see the aforementioned (and others) asking themselves “how can I make the best music possible, and do it in a way where the fan is a part of it all?” He has Cole.
But he had to be the one.
Eventually, everyone (even without cause) grows to dislike dynasties and royalty. People are used every single day. But let come the day when they find out they are not a friend of the king…
And it is the day they tear down the castle.
“Eventually, everyone (even without cause) grows to dislike dynasties and royalty. People are used every single day. But let come the day when they find out they are not a friend of the king…
And it is the day they tear down the castle.”
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… yet somehow the united kingdom still exists, and america remains faithfully obsessed with stupid royal babies.
@The Real Anonymous dropping gems. I thought the exact same thing. Last time dude tweeted before this tidal rant was, 1/11 and before that 9/1/14. like this was a terrible way to try to save face. Anything else woulda been better, a statement, op ed or some shit. not this
@The Real Anonymous
You’re officially back. Giving us insider’s knowledge like we know these people like that. I do think the reason Jay went on twitter though was because it is the most efficient way to reach is his target demographic. It just didn’t go as planned because people can see through that shit just like his “Occupy All Streets” campaign.
@The Real Anonymous I hear you sir. I left out Apple/Beats in my little analysis largely due to the fact that they/you hadn’t launched your service yet and #2 Apple has such a built-in audience that they’re not gonna lose—tho iRadio hasn’t done nearly what it shoulda done by now.
But I still think, unless you’re like Apple which has ginormously deap pockets and can pay higher royalties if it wants to, there’s an inherent flaw in streaming as a revenue stream that hurts artists on the whole making an artist-run company seem plausible. Maybe “hurts artists” is the wrong phrase, but if we move to a music consumption model where streaming grows to compete without right purchases/DLs as most think it will, then if you’re an artist, you’ll want streaming to pay more, or you’ll want to own part of the company which reduces us down to rich artists who’ll be the only ones who have that option, hence TIDAL.
As for Jay’s lack of engagement, it’s funny. We’ve waited for Detox for how long? Dre kicks it with the unwashed masses how often? BEATS brought Dre a lot of cache as “the people’s champ” yet he was at least as distant as any other successful artist has been/is.
People attack who they want and the reasons are sometimes legit, most aren’t.
I’m not sure what the hatred towards TIDAL is. I won’t buy it, i don’t think it’s a good idea poorly executed. But as someone who owns an ipad, macbook, ipod, i can’t say i’ll be DL’ing Apple’s service either. Not outta allegiance or bias. I just like owning music outright and i’m tired of DL’ing apps.
Gotty you need to slide TRA some shoes, a loosie, a nightcap, give him something PLEASE. This site hadn’t been interesting in months. I kept coming back, checking, because I was hoping all the real negus hadn’t left. This was just insidery enough to bring him back, thank you TRA, I appreciate it. BTW you’re wrong on Shawn, he’ll be back as soon as he drops something hot… which may be never.
My cousin just moved to Nigeria….
I hope Tidal stays around, if only to provide competition to Apple, Spotify, and Google. Competition will be necessary to raise artist compensation and for the prices to remain reasonable.
I want to believe in this company. I want to see the underdog win and make media executives sweat. I believe a company like Tidal can be a positive force for change in the music industry, if successful. I say this not as a Jay-Z fan, but as a fan of hip-hop, music, and better business.
But I can’t see Tidal being successful in the long-term, with the current state of its product. It has to further differentiate itself from the current kings of streaming because Tidal will not be able to win a war in catalog size or exclusivity. Like TRA said, Tidal can’t put up the money that Apple can. A hi-fi streaming service is too niche and not enough. The whole “artist exclusives” situation needs to be restructured.
The more I think about it, there’s a lot of different things Tidal can do, and many ways it can go…I kinda want to work there and help out lol. I feel like if Tidal fails, then we’re setting up the future of the music business to resemble the past: a sea of artists dealing with a few, powerful distribution firms who control the gates without fear of competition.
Ain’t nobody out to get TIDAL… Nope.
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is it extremely small minded of me for wanting him to succeed at this just cuz he’s a brooklyn boy and i have no clue who runs those other markets.
in my mind, nobody bashes or speaks of the failures or what appears to be failures of those other companies. we just accept their greatness and continue to line up for their products. but when a black man is the face, or the owner, or ceo or whatever, ppl be like “watch it fail, lets all watch it fail”
its hard for me to not believe some sort of conspiracy theory of lets spread rumors of its failure to make ppl not want to even bother with it. we wanna support winners but if it looks like your about to lose, we will all turn our backs on you.
i wouldnt mind seeing media report some kinda customer frenzy surrounding tidal the way it does with anything apple related. i dont even know if the apple iwatch is successful, but it appears to be cuz i havent seen any article telling me how wack it is, or much of a colossal failure it is. that stuff matters to consumers. ppl will buy it just cuz they think its poppin and not buy cuz an article says nobody else is buying it.
You hit it on so much here. Especially about how media shapes perception. Long story short, I hate online haters disguised as journalists.
Nail on head @County of Kings
It has nothing to do with him being black. This nigga is cocky and arrogant, simple as that. Their whole rollout was a farce, people don’t buy that shit, that’s why it’s getting backlash, not because he’s back
I look at it as people wanting him to fail because he’s a social figure. Where as these other companies you don’t know the nigga in charge, ain’t really ever heard about him/them. Hell Apple gets hell of hate online, probably more than Jay does, just have to go to the right sites. Shit look at all the hate re the apple watch, everywhere I look where it’s the public, they think it’s the dumbest thing.
JAY Z’s TIDAL Illuminati Streaming Music Service Exposed
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Jay-Z’s TIDAL is raping the public and raping smaller artists… or something.
Professor Griff & Zaza Ali speaks on Jay-Z’s Tidal, Business, and The Future of Music
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can always count on Professor Griff to bring his tin foil hat to the table.
So it’s cool to see dame fucking up but jay is hands off…right?
lol