Tidal: Jay Z, Madonna and Kanye make waves in the streaming business
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Version 0 of 1. Name: Tidal Age: One day old. Appearance: A microphone emoji, then 120 money emojis, then the thumbs-up emoji. Is this what all the pop stars have been tweeting about? That’s right. The Tidal launch brought together an unprecedented number of musical superstars, such as Jay Z, Kanye West and Madonna, with an estimated collective worth of $2.5bn. This must be important. What’s the endgoal of Tidal? Universal renewable power? Access to clean water for all? Not quite. It mainly involves making sure that Jay Z and Madonna get paid even more money than they already do. Oh. Maybe that’s unfair. Tidal is actually a streaming music service that will pay artists double the revenue offered by competitors such as Spotify. Related: Will Jay Z's Tidal service be washed away by Spotify? And why should I sign up? Because it provides high-resolution audio and – since it’s owned by all the aforementioned superstars – many big releases are likely to be Tidal-exclusive at first. But I listen to all my music through laptop speakers and I hate Jay Z. You’re probably fine then. How important is Tidal, exactly? If you’re an artist who owns it, it’s the single-most important thing in the history of the world. To demonstrate this, the launch was a ridiculous orgy of nodding and frowning and Nietzsche quotes and solemn contract-signing. It sounds like the Treaty of Versailles. Exactly, if Georges Clemenceau had rocked up in a giant glittery space helmet, as Daft Punk did for this. Still, what could possibly go wrong? Well, it could just turn out that Tidal is purely a way to make a few middle-aged multimillionaires even richer, and it’ll do nothing for artists who lack their platform. Right. Or it might disintegrate in a stormcloud of arguments and indulgent spending and bad business decisions, like so many other artist-owned ventures have. True. But hopefully that won’t happen. God forbid that Daft Punk will have to sell those gold space helmets to make ends meet. Do say: “I believe it was Friedrich Nietzsche who said: ‘When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’ ” Don’t say: “I don’t know about you, but I’m suddenly hungry for a Planet Hollywood burger.” |