Jay Z’s high-fidelity music streaming service, Tidal, has finally appointed a new CEO following six months without one.
Jeff Toig formerly worked as chief business officer for audio distribution platform SoundCloud, but will take on the role of Tidal CEO starting from January.
While Tidal has spent the last half a year under Jay Z’s temporary stewardship, Toig will actually be the company’s third CEO since it relaunched just eight months ago.
First CEO, Andy Chen, was a leftover from the acquisition of Tidal from Swedish company Aspiro, and he lasted only a month following the service’s March relaunch.
Chen’s replacement, Peter Tonstad, made it through to June, but Tidal insists that his was only an interim CEO position.
Toig’s approach to this precarious new job will be to try to further differentiate Tidal from rival services such as Spotify and Apple Music. According to the WSJ, he’ll push Tidal’s concert efforts and exclusive live-streamed shows.
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Toig will also continue Tidal’s artist-led slant, which sees the service offering subscribers the chance to meet their favourite artists, as well as early access to tour tickets.
It seems that while it was seeking out a new CEO, Tidal held exploratory talks with a range of other streaming services over a possible merger. One thing that put potential partners off, it’s claimed, is Tidal’s policy of spending more on royalties than the industry standard, which leaves less for marketing.
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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.
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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.
