FULL STREAM AHEAD
But Jay Z’s Tidal faces some tough competition
Jay Z promised exclusives from his megahyped new streaming service, Tidal.
This past week, he started delivering them.
Jay began close to home, by releasing a new song/video from wife Beyoncé, “Die With You.” The next day, the service streamed a formidable exclusive on the song “American Oxygen,” cut by one of the company’s powerful co-owners, Rihanna.
But the question is: Will starry teases like these be enough for Tidal to lure listeners away from the world’s top streaming site, Spotify, a colossus which right now boasts 60 million subscribers? More, can it stave off the potentially greater threat of a service set to launch later this year from the industry’s 800-pound gorilla: Apple?
Tidal got off to a red-faced start when its introductory press conference — featuring stars like Madonna and Beyoncé — was roundly lampooned on social media.
“It looked they were coming out for a ‘We Are The World’ press conference,” commented Lenny Beer, editor of the industry magazine Hits. “The whole thing looked Mickey Mouse.”
Tidal faces a more daunting hurdle by offering no free option for fans, as do Spotify and other streaming services. Some listeners do pay for Spotify, to avoid annoying advertising which otherwise breaks up an endless flow of music. Tellingly, only 25% of Spotify’s subscribers lay out.
To experience Tidal you have to pony up either $10 a month, or $19.95, for higher quality audio. Tidal hopes that its finer fidelity option will be a secondary lure.
Unfortunately, few fans have shown the slightest interest in sound quality better than the tinny, compressed wheeze they’re used to hearing through cheap ear buds. Few even seem to know something more sensual exists.
Tidal’s third selling point could be called the “do-the-right thing” argument. Jay’s company promises to funnel fairer funds to the artists who take part. Lately, there has been tons of withering publicity about streaming companies that fork over pennies in profits to artists, based on millions of streams of their songs. Tidal’s pay model aims to make up for that. Still, many observers feel the ethics question will land on deaf ears.
“People have rationalized that they’re not stealing the music for years,” says prominent music industry lawyer George Gilbert. “They say that the record companies rip off the artists anyway. Or that the price of CDs was too expensive for so long and now they’re taking their revenge.”
Gilbert also wonders how much, in hard dollars, the artists will end up benefiting from Tidal.
“You see Jay Z and Madonna, and all these big stars, on that stage presented as owners. But I’m sure Jay bought the original company behind Tidal (the Swedish tech outfit Aspiro) with a lot of other people’s money,” he says.
“My guess is that he put in a relatively small percentage of his own money. I’d also guess that he, and the other artists, are getting a very small portion of the company profits.”
Even Tidal’s “exclusivity” may be hard to sustain. It’s the record companies, not the artists, who own the masters of their recordings. Companies may be reluctant to allow many exclusives for fear of angering other powerful industry players, like iTunes, Amazon, Pandora and Spotify. Worse, fans have a habit of putting up the music they gain access to on YouTube themselves.
Either way, Beer surmises that when Apple’s new streaming service comes, it will trump Tidal — as well as Spotify.
“It’s all about marketing,” he says. “And no one has the image-marketing, or the bank, that Apple has. They already control 98% of the singles market. Eventually, they’ll be the winners in streaming, too.”
Then again, a small portion of the streaming market may be all Tidal really needs — or expects. Jay has said that he doesn’t need his company to be McDonald’s. It would be okay if it’s more like Shake Shack.
If that means finer sound for the discerning few, and some bucks for deserving artists, at least Tidal will have earned a modest place in the streaming scene.