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Tidal - Artist owned high fidelity streaming service

Just curious what you think. Will share my opinion later.

Unless they are looking for producers, I have no idea what this is doing here.

This immediately struck me as a fundamental shift, music makers claiming the system at long last. Lets hope the apparent purity of the concept does not get hi-jacked by a few and turned into just another way of milking others dry.

I don't have any in depth knowledge on the concept, just what I saw briefly on the news;

Jay Z's strategy will include encouraging artists to lobby their labels to give Tidal new music a week in advance of other services, giving it a short window of exclusivity.

He told Billboard: "We didn't like the direction music was going and thought maybe we could get in and strike an honest blow.

"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."

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Originally posted by Richard Butler This immediately struck me as a fundamental shift, music makers claiming the system at long last. Lets hope the apparent purity of the concept does not get hi-jacked by a few and turned into just another way of milking others dry.

I'm not particularly sanguine that the ideals will last in the business environment, or that this service will last very long. Sure, big names are involved--and Maverick, for example (Madge's label) writes exactly the same screw-the-artist contracts as every label out there.

Like it or not, people now simply expect to pay very little for the majority of the music they listen to. iTunes made a splash because of its relatively small payments (by the consumer) and the ease of integration with the iPod/Apple ecosystem.

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Originally posted by deegee Like it or not, people now simply expect to pay very little for the majority of the music they listen to. iTunes made a splash because of its relatively small payments (by the consumer) and the ease of integration with the iPod/Apple ecosystem.

You see I read this ^ all the time, and yet I then get conflicting evidence, for example the producers of that dance track being sued for what was it, $12m, by Marvin Gayes family? So one track on the dance scene apparently making millions, and it wasn't that big a track was it?

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Originally posted by Richard Butler and it wasn't that big a track was it?

Nah not really, just the most downloaded song of all time in the uk ever

Civil suits are not just about measurable damages, they're also about punitive damages aimed at dissuading such behaviour in the future.

*~*~"Artists"~*~*

how does this differ from Spotify? (apart from artists obv. migrating over) cant be arsed watching the vid

I'm extremely sceptical about Tidal and don't see how the business model is any different that Spotify apart from lossless audio (which I like). The joke is, the vast majority of people on tidal are listening through Beats headphones so really this is just about marketing, and not quality of audio reproduction.

I'd like to know the nuts of bolts of their pay/contract model and again, I said it in the other thread, but it amazes me that youtube and spotify are allowed to trade, doing what is basically full on piracy. It's just putting music out there with faux legitimacy - It's why the founders of youtube were so happy to flog it as soon as they got an offer from google, and why they took stock as payment - nice big metal umbrella to shield them from what would have been massive litigation for breach of copyright. Of course, no problem for youtube's army of lawyers and connections to package the site as legitimate.

UNless, Tidal really is paying artists significantly more money than Spoty or the other streaming services, it won't change a thing.

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Originally posted by Robotrance They do support lossless though

Something that's basically irrelevant. I know a couple of people who tried the A/B testing on studio monitor setups, couldn't tell the difference. And if there's little to no difference detectable on multi-$K rigs, ain't no way someone using crappy headphones is going to be able to detect any difference whatsoever. The lossless thing is pure marketing, and nothing more.

My opinion on Tidal...

1. A bunch of recognized artists basically plugging their own "artist owned" streaming platform. Saying it is better for artists is a bunch of nonsense, their business-model is exactly the same as any other streaming platform. Record labels deals still have to be made as those labels hold key rights to the audio.

2. Lossless streaming is already done by other platforms too. Their non-losless packages are the same price as competing platforms. Nothing new.

3. Not all artists earn more, just those in the video as we can be reasonably assume they own a share in the company. Otherwise it wouldn't really be artist owned. This implies that if another artist's music would be available there, Madonna, Deadmau5, Jay-Z and others would get a cut which could have been yours.

4. Jay-Z (major stakeholder in Tidal) should have contacted Dr.Dre. At least Dre knows how to sell a shit product. But hey, bad publicity is also publicity. The PR moment was horribly painful to watch. A complete miss before it even started.

5. The platform is really small. Maybe artist endorsement will work and make it grow substantially. I hope not to be honest. It feels like the artists in the video all are in it for the wrong reasons. Tidal feels like a scam. Artist should be artists, not mooching money off other artists, especially not if you're already in the multi-million dollar game and really just don't need it. At least Spotify is in the game of making money and isn't trying to make it look like it isn't.


My boss summed it up in a single sentence: "It's like Michael Jackson's 'Heal the world', but they want to keep the money for themselves".

yeah it kinda seems like these artists saw an opportunity to make more money for themselves......which is what they are good at lets be honest, how much is Jay-Z worth these days???

Why let Spotify make the money when they themselves could be making it? Cant say i blame them!

Great point on the lossless RANN, like really, what percentage of people will notice a difference? marketing......

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Originally posted by evo8 how much is Jay-Z worth these days???

He's not worth shit. He might have money though.

Net worth of Jay-Z is estimated well over 500 million dollars.

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Originally posted by Robotrance That's bullshit. If you can't hear any difference between a CD and MP3 you probably have never been very interested or have the right set of ears, experience and hifi to begin with. I can listen to lossless 12 times longer without being tired than with the best MP3 which hardly anyone support though. You have to know how to compare. Time is the key word. Long listening sessions at loud levels. Impossible with MP3.

If actual paid professionals can't hear the difference on expensive studio rigs, how many people at home/on their portable devices are going to hear a difference?

How many streaming media listeners are going to give a shit about sound quality, honestly? They're going to listen with their iPhone earbuds anyway.

Offering pop music listeners high quality audio is like giving fine wine to rednecks.

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Originally posted by Mr.Mystery How many streaming media listeners are going to give a shit about sound quality, honestly? They're going to listen with their iPhone earbuds anyway. Offering pop music listeners high quality audio is like giving fine wine to rednecks.

Beats by Dre don't sell better because they are actually much higher quality, its mainly marketing. This is the same thing for most people.

I do prefer my music in FLAC or at least 320kbps MP3 format. 128 mp3 is noticeably worse than any either of them. I can't tell much of a difference between 320 MP3 and FLAC but FLAC is nice to have for encoding purposes.

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Originally posted by djnitride Beats by Dre don't sell better because they are actually much higher quality, its mainly marketing. This is the same thing for most people.

They could even go as far as not stream high quality audio at all and just say they do. How many could really tell?

I bet people are dying to hear rihanna in losless.

Great posts in this thread, especially from Palm and Storyteller.

My feeling is that Jay-Z saw the bank that Dr.Dre made and said "I want some of that too".

You need to understand that Beats getting bought by apple was not for the hardware, it was for the streaming service and user base.

And that's what Jay-z is trying to do - market it as higher quality (a perceived competitive advantage over other mainstream streaming sites) and as giving more to the Artists (again another perceived competitive advantage designed to appeal to people like me who hate spotify and youtube for their legitimized piracy platform).

As palm said, this is a exit deal; Jay-z wants to flip this for several hundred million dollars. And don't believe everything you read about his net worth - he's made some staggeringly bad investments over the years including three 8 figure property deals that went south and ended up loosing him a small fortune.

Sure, he's got millions but I know the developer of a house he was looking at here in LA that was priced at $120 and Jay-z just couldn't stretch to making an offer close to it (it ended up being bought by a billionaire computer game creator for $90m).

And I think that's what driving Jay-z to try to build this and flip it - he's not in the billionaire boys club yet and watching Dre do it must have really got to him.

It's a tough market; so much competition and Apple could crush him in a heartbeat if the decide to do so. Maybe he's hoping that apple will buy it too lol.

Here's more info on Jay-Z giving "more to artists":

http://popbitch.com/home/2015/03/31/scamming-the-tide/

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We were surprised to discover that Jay Z was quite so interested in ensuring that artists get paid a fair price for their work. He's certainly changed his tune a bit since Magna Carta Holy Grail came out. On that album (which you may remember as that one he sold to Samsung for $5 million � as part of a larger $20m deal) Jay took a piece by the 78 year old jazz composer, Bruno Spoerri, rapped all over it, and called the resulting track Versus. What�s ordinarily supposed to happen in this sort of situation is that the sampling artist would call up the original composer, ask for permission to use the music, acquire the rights (usually for a fee) and then release it once everything is cleared and above board. Not Jay Z though. No, he barged straight on ahead � without Bruno�s knowledge or his blessing. Then, to compound the issue, rather than discreetly gloss over this theft, Jay actually started claiming in interviews that he, Timbaland and Swizz Beats had composed the beat in the studio � even going so far as to explain the intricate (but entirely horseshit) origin story to Zane Lowe on Radio 1. Versus came out in 2013, but a legal settlement was only reached two weeks ago. The timing was rather neat � what with it all being finalised in the quiet shadow of all the Robin Thicke/Marvin Gaye headlines, and cleared just in time for this new crusade of his to ensure that hard-pressed musicians get fairly paid for their music.

And we learn that the combined net wealth of the 17 artists involved in TIDAL is $2,049,000,000. Yes, just over $2 billion.

The sad part is, it's not these artists who need a better deal. This is literally an extension of the now defunct Radio royalties deal that was in place until just a few years ago - basically the top artists (Phil Collins, Elton John, MJ, Celine Dion, etc) got the lions share of radio play royalites as they were the biggest artists.

Was such bullshit though as RDS (radio data tracking) was in place in Europe from the mid 80's and the USA since the early 90's, but still, Royalties were paid based on stature, not radio plays.

Same bullshit here, just on a different platform.

So it looks like that Tidal is already a massive flop:

quote:

Two weeks after Tidal briefly cracked the U.S. iPhone top 20 download chart, the app has crashed out of the top 700. Apparently American consumers have limited empathy towards Beyonce and Nicki. Soon after the launch fiasco, Tidal�s CEO was kicked out in a �streamlining� move. The new CEO Peter Tonstad, a former consultant for the Norwegian Ministry of Environment, has his work cut out for him. To make matters worse for Tidal, its main rivals are now surging. On April 20th, Pandora and Spotify occupied positions No. 3 and No. 4 on the U.S. iPhone revenue chart, respectively. This was the first time two music streaming services have hit the top 4 in sales simultaneously. In order to achieve the feat, Pandora and Spotify had to push Candy Crush Saga out of U.S. iPhone top 4 revenue chart, which is a remarkable achievement.

Full article here: (and it gets worse for JayZ)

http://bgr.com/2015/04/21/tidal-vs-pandora-vs-spotify/

Yeah they pretty much nailed it. On one hand they talked about the artist not getting their fair share and the next they have a bunch of big names where streaming royalties mean next to nothing to. The marketing is so disconnected from the type of music fan that actually cares about that.

I am so sorry that JayZ and friends couldn't buy a golden jet this year, really I am

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