Spotify and other music streaming services are in for a tough competition a few months down the road following the launch of Tidal on March 30, a streaming service owned by hip hop artist Jay Z and other A-list music celebrities.
The launching event was held in New York that was attended by a parade of topnotch music artists that promises only big things for Tidal.
While Jay Z and his wife Beyonce are the major shareholders to Tidal, since Jay Z has been saying that he has evolved into being a businessman, other pop superstars who are part owners of the rebranded music streaming service include Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Daft Punk, Madonna, Jack White, Rihanna, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Nicki Minaj, and a host of others.
Alicia Keys was very candid in proclaiming that their new venture actually represents the dawning of a new era for the music industry at the height of today’s music streaming, cites The Daily Beast.
The “Girl on Fire” singer explained during her address that Tidal is meant to cultivate a sound business enterprise that promotes the long-term sustainability of music and the music industry around the world. She said that the artists behind Tidal believe that it is in everyone’s interest to preserve the value of music and to ensure a healthy and robust industry in the years to come.
Grossly underpaid
A number of music artists have recently come out in the open saying that they are being grossly underpaid by Spotify and other music streaming services.
Spotify has over 60 million users, about 25% of them are on paid subscription. While Tidal aims to eventually topple Spotify, it has long ways to go considering that the rebranded music streaming service currently has 500,000 users which is not even one percent of total number of users for the popular streaming service.
However, there are already reports that Tidal would be featuring exclusive artist content that cannot be found on Spotify or other music streaming service.
When it was launched on March 30, Tidal was proclaimed as a music streaming service for the artist and by the artist. But many music enthusiasts still think that the $24.99 a month subscription for Tidal is a little too stiff especially given the fact that they can listen to music at half the price or even less from other streaming services.
Sound quality
Tidal is also espousing better sound quality compared to Spotify and other music streaming services since it is streaming FLAC files instead of the inferior MP3 format.
But music streaming service providers have found out that music enthusiasts actually don’t go for better audio but for the kind of songs or sounds that they prefer to stream and listen to.
Accordingly, when Deezer offered better sound, it was able to raise its subscriber base by 200,000 within nine months, which is not really an enormous audience and the cost of doing it actually outweighs the results.