If you haven’t heard of Tidal yet, don’t worry; the streaming service backed by various big name artists such as Jay-Z and Kanye will whither away and die before you have a chance to stream one of their lossless quality songs. Two weeks ago, a conference was held in which several millionaire artists advertised the “premium” streaming service that would promise more money for artists on the site. This didn’t go over so well, as it’s hard to convince the common man that a millionaire on stage asking for more money has their best interests at heart.
“Dumpster Fire” is the only term to describe the current state of Tidal. One week after the concert, rumors surfaced that Jay-Z was personally calling paying members of Tidal to thank them for their support. This is after the CEO and twenty five other employees already jumped ship—maybe Jay-Z should have called them instead. Thankfully, Jay’s failure presents me with an opportunity to describe what exactly went wrong here.
The first misstep that comes to mind is Tidal’s “Beats by Dre” mentality: Just because you sell an image doesn’t mean you can sell a product. Beats succeeded because there was a physical presence. You could argue all you want about the sound quality and overpricing of the headphones, but nobody could deny the major selling point was the style. Everyone’s favorite sports players wore Beats, and that slick lowercase “b” can be seen several times on one walkthrough of any college campus in America.
Tidal tried to pull off the same stunt, using the image of Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Daft Punk to convince potential customers that Tidal was as stylish as those who had shares in the company. The biggest flaw in this plan is that nobody cares what streaming service you use. Software can be sexy for different reasons, but not the ones Jay-Z was trying to push. The press conference for Tidal reeked of pretentiousness, with each artist shareholder signing a “declaration” that Tidal will “spark conversation and lay a foundation for tomorrow’s burgeoning star.” Okay, well, how will any “burgeoning star” trust the biggest and richest names in the music industry to guarantee that they too will have a place amongst the best?
If I was gonna sell the public on a lossless streaming service, I would bring out artists like Tortoise, whose intricate post-rock pieces might actually require the highest quality digital file to have the highest quality experiences. The artists on stage have been downloaded to MP3 from YouTube more times than songs they’ve actually sold. The last time I heard “Get Lucky (feat. Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers)” from Daft Punk was when it was blaring at a stunning 16kbps (the standard is 320) from a bar mitzvah montage.
The average music consumer is going to be hard-pressed to distinguish lossless quality music from the music of a typical streaming service like Spotify. And, unless you have the proper equipment to play such music, your experience with Tidal premium will be all but placebo—a placebo that costs 20 dollars a month, twice that of Spotify. Most users won’t be able to stream such high-quality music on their phone due to the ungodly amount of data such an action requires.
Jay-Z tried to shortcut the way to technological success—he must have watched a TED presentation and said, “We should talk like that!” Buzzwords alone can’t get a company started. He began losing credibility the moment he started haphazardly slapping words like “game-changing” and “history-making” onto the image of Tidal. Any average listener can see that Tidal is almost identical to Spotify, so what is making history here. Lossless streaming? A higher price tag?
The amount of politics brought up at the press conference was almost insulting to those who have actually made history. The first line of their declaration read, “Every movement throughout history began with a few individuals banding together with a vision, a vision to change the status quo.” More often than not, those individuals were at a disadvantage and had to fight long and hard to realize their vision. It’s not too groundbreaking when a group of millionaires come together and say, “Lets make more money!”
When Alicia Keys was about to have all the artists on stage sign the declaration, a couple of shouts came from the audience, to which Keys replied, “Y’all screams are like everything… yes, we feel you!” It may be abundantly clear from this article, but, call me crazy, I actually think she doesn’t feel us. There’s nothing more infuriating than having someone so high up on the social chain try to relate to you on a level of struggle. It’s the same reason all U.S. presidential candidates look disingenuous when they visit rural farmlands on their campaign trail. Their strained looks as they stomach some biscuits and gravy at the local town diner reveal that, in the end, it’s just business.
If Jay-Z had rolled out Tidal not as a political statement, but just as a higher quality alternative to Spotify, perhaps internet bloggers wouldn’t flock to their publications with glee while smugly discrediting the service. With the amount of collective net worth on stage at Tidal’s conference, there was no way that the average consumer of music was going to rise up in some sort of emotional rebellious fit and purchase Tidal. The service is bound to flounder, which might set a completely different historical precedent than the shareholders had in mind.
