Tidal (service)

History

Branching off from WiMP, which was launched in Norway in 2010 and later available in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Poland, Aspiro first launched the Tidal brand in the UK, the US, and Canada on October 28, 2014. The launch was supported by Sonos and 15 other home audio manufacturers as integrations partners. In January 2015, Tidal launched in five more European countries: Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It is currently available in 52 countries worldwide.

Aspiro was purchased by Project Panther Bidco Ltd. (owned by Jay Z) for SEK 466 million (USD $56.2 million) in January 2015. Before acquiring Aspiro, Jay Z stated in an interview with Billboard that he was willing to partner with other streaming services to carry out his vision. "We talked to every single service and we explored all the options," stated Jay Z, "But at the end of the day, we figured if we're going to shape this thing the way we see it, then we need to have independence. And that became a better proposition for us, not an easier one, mind you," he concluded.

On April 16, 2015 it came to public attention that Tidal was closing its original Aspiro offices in Stockholm, terminating the employment for all Swedish employees and the current CEO Andy Chen. The company refused to comment on closing the offices, but confirmed that Andy Chen had been replaced as CEO by Peter Tonstad. In December 2015, Tidal appointed Jeff Toig as CEO of the company.

On January 23rd, 2017, US mobile carrier Sprint announced that they were buying a 33 percent stake in Tidal, reporting Sprint will offer exclusive content to Sprint customers.

Artist ownership

Tidal is currently owned by Jay Z, and a variety of other successful music artists, making it the first artist-owned streaming service in the world. The idea of an artist-owned streaming platform was stated as to "restore the value to music by launching a service owned by artists." During the previously-mentioned press conference, Jay Z himself, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Daft Punk, Jack White, Madonna, Arcade Fire, Alicia Keys, Usher, Chris Martin, Calvin Harris, deadmau5, Jason Aldean and J. Cole were introduced to the stage as "the owners of TIDAL". Eric Harvey of Pitchfork stated on the artists who co-own the service, "These are the 1 percent of pop music in the world right now, these are artists who do not answer to record labels, do not answer to corporations."

A key selling point for Tidal in relation to competing with other streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora Radio is the exclusive content already available and expected for the future from the current artists who co-own the company, as well as others. Exclusive content available on the relaunch of Tidal included Rihanna's new single "Bitch Better Have My Money", The White Stripes debut television appearance, Daft Punk's Electroma (2006), and playlists personally curated by Jay Z, Beyoncé, Arcade Fire and Coldplay. Tidal stated on its official Twitter page that "lots of exclusive content [is] on the way". In April 2015, Tidal exclusives included Beyoncé releasing a video of her performing "Die for You", a never-before heard original song, dedicated to her and Jay Z's wedding anniversary, Madonna releasing a teaser of her upcoming music video at the time for "Ghosttown" and Rihanna debuting her brand new song and music video "American Oxygen".

On March 30, 2015, a press conference was held at Skylight at Moynihan Station in New York City, to officially relaunch Tidal. The conference started with a brief introduction and explanation of Tidal. After introducing the aforementioned sixteen artist co-owners of Tidal onstage, recording artist Alicia Keys spoke on behalf of the artists and for Tidal. She stated, "So we come together before you on this day, March 30th, 2015, with one voice in unity in the hopes that today will be another one of those moments in time, a moment that will forever change the course of music history." Keys also described the event as like a "graduation". At the end of the press conference, all artists onstage signed a declaration, which stated Tidal's mission. Tidal claimed to have gained 100,000 new subscribers following the press conference revealing the artists involved in the service.

In June 2015, Lil Wayne joined the service's roster as an artist co-owner, kicking off the partnership by exclusively releasing a track on the service called "Glory."

On February 23, 2016, T.I. joined the service's roster as the latest co-owner, kicking off the partnership by releasing "Money Talk", a single from his tenth album, exclusively on the service, as well as streaming his concert live from Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta.

On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released "Lemonade," her second "visual album" available for streaming exclusively on Tidal. on April 25, it was made available for purchase by track or album on Amazon Music and the iTunes store and on May 6th, it arrived at physical retailers.

In November 2016, Tidal released, with exclusivity, the single of work of the singer Claudia Leitte, "Taquitá", where it gained worldwide repercussion. The video clip was also released exclusively on the platform for one week.

In January 2017, the company announced a partnership with UK-company Master Quality Authenticated to deliver master-quality recordings—authenticated and unbroken versions (typically 96 kHz / 24 bit) with the highest-possible resolution to its HiFi subscribers. Tidal is the only streaming company to offer this service.

Reception

Shortly after Tidal's launch and press conference, the mobile version of the service shot to the top 20 of the U.S. iPhone Apps chart. However, following criticism for its "out-of-touch marketing campaign", two weeks later, the app had already fallen out of the top 700 ranking of the same list, while competing services like Spotify and Pandora were surging.

Praise

Glenn Peoples of Billboard wrote that Tidal was a good thing for the music industry. He stated that the U.S. streaming market needed a "kick in the butt" when looking at the growth rate of streaming from 2014 to 2015. Peoples also noted that more competition in the streaming market is a good thing as it could lead to a "greater diffusion of innovation". He concluded that a service like Tidal - which is promoted as paying a fair amount of royalties to both the artists and the songwriters - will lead to the industry as a whole sorting out its issues with streaming royalties.

Criticism

Writing for USA Today's website, Micah Peters released a list of "3 reasons why Jay Z's new Tidal streaming service is stupid". The article focused on points that the high fidelity, lossless audio quality model being promoted was "overestimat[ing] the average listener". Peters worried that most listeners do not have the required, advanced headphones to distinguish the difference between ordinary and high fidelity audio. The article also stated that the $20 price was simply not reasonable for the mass market.

Recording artist Lily Allen expressed her opinions on Tidal on her official Twitter account. She feared that the high price of Tidal, as well as the mass popularity of the artist co-owners, could result in crippling the music industry and increasing piracy. She stated "I love Jay-Z so much, but Tidal is (so) expensive compared to other perfectly good streaming services, he's taken the biggest artists... Made them exclusive to Tidal (am I right in thinking this?), people are going to swarm back to pirate sites in droves".]

Jay Z responded to criticism with a freestyle during the Tidal X: Jaÿ-Z B-Sides concert. He compares Tidal with Apple and Nike, and says that Tidal has been subjected to hypocritical criticism.

Kanye West's decision to initially release his album The Life of Pablo as a Tidal streaming exclusive led to criticism from fans, who felt that streaming exclusivity could promote piracy. Sure enough, the album has been pirated over 500,000 times as of February 17, 2016. West later made the album available to stream on competing services.

Finances and royalties

In the United States, a monthly subscription costs $9.99 for the standard "premium" service, or $19.99 for the lossless quality high fidelity ("HiFi") service, when subscribed through the Tidal website. Subscriptions cost 30% more ($12.99/$25.99) when subscribed directly through the iOS app due to Apple App Store fees. Tidal offers a 50% discount for students of accredited institutions, as well as a 40% discount for users in military service. Tidal claims to pay the highest royalty percentage of any current music streaming company, with approximately 75% of members subscription fees being given to record labels for individual artist and songwriter distribution.

One artist has stated that artist royalties per track from Aspiro/Tidal are currently over three times than those paid by Spotify, but that royalties may decrease to provide a sufficient return on investment. Jay Z commented in an interview to Billboard that artists would be paid more by being streamed on Tidal than with Spotify, stating "Will artists make more money? Even if it means less profit for our bottom line? Absolutely. That's easy for us. We can do that. Less profit for our bottom line, more money for the artist; fantastic. Let's do that today." In the same interview he also stressed the service was for people "lower down on the food chain". "For someone like me, I can go on tour, but what about the people working on the record, the content creators and not just the artists? If they're not being compensated properly, then I think we'll lose some writers and producers and people like that who depend on fair trade. Some would probably have to take another job, and I think we'll lose some great writers in the process."

On February 27, 2016, Yesh Music, LLC and John Emanuele from the band The American Dollar launched a $5 million class-action lawsuit that claimed Tidal has yet to compensate the band for any of the royalty payments accrued from the streaming of the band's 116 copyrighted songs. The group had asked months ago to have their music removed from Tidal. As of today, the band's profile is currently still on the service, however no music is available to stream or download on Tidal. The suit also accused Tidal of using faulty numbers to payout artists while also having undercut these same individuals by 35%. A response from Tidal has stated that they are indeed fully up to date on all royalties for the group and have removed said intellectual property from their servers.

In January 2017, Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reported that it had received internal documents disclosing lower subscriber counts than had been publicly announced by Tidal and its owners, having only 350,000 users in September 2015 (contradicting a claim by Jay Z that the service had a million users), and 850,000 subscribers by March 2016, rather than the 3 million claimed by the service (which may have been inflated by including users that were using a free trial).

Subscription plans

As of February 2017, Tidal is available in 52 countries. As of February 2016, the two Tidal subscriptions are listed below. However, prices differ from country to country, according to local market standards.

No free option is available.