Hip hop superstar and owner of Tidal Jay-Z has taken to social media to defend his beleaguered premium music streaming service.
Tidal has had something of a rough time of it since its relaunch a month or so ago.
The premium music service’s weird relaunch struck completely the wrong note, flaunting its famous pop star executives rather than bigging up the emerging artists that would benefit most from its refreshed approach to royalties.
What’s more, it soon emerged that the Tidal service wasn’t performing particularly well, having plunged down the app charts after a brief launch spike.
But Jay-Z is having none of it. As highlighted by Engadget, the star has been taking to Twitter over the weekend to set the record straight – or at least, the record as he sees it.
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Of course, that ignores the fact that Tidal has actually been around for significantly longer than a month. In fact, it launched in the US and UK back in October, and prior to the high-profile relaunch it had amassed around 580,000 paying customers.
This would suggest that the 770,000 perhaps isn’t as impressive as Jay-Z would have you believe – though it should be noted that he doesn’t specify precisely how many new customers have signed up since he took over.
Related: Tidal: The story so far
Jay-Z followed up this tweet with another: “Tidal pays 75% royalty rate to ALL artists, writers and producers – not just the founding members on stage.”
That’s a far more worthwhile point to make – that Tidal isn’t simply a way to line the pockets of famous executives such as Madonna, Rhianna, Kanye West, and of course Jay-Z himself. Of course, there wouldn’t be quite so much negativity around Tidal if this point was made more succinctly from the outset.
Aside from all this nonsense, it’s worth mentioning that Tidal is actually quite good – particularly for those with the sharp ears and sharper audio equipment to capitalise on it.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
