Independent NDM case study: Up-to-the-minute web research - Third Task

Independent NDM case study: Up-to-the-minute web research: TIDAL

“This platform will allow art to flourish”

The Guardian –

Owned by Jay-Z - old 100m records, founded a business empire worth upwards of $520m (£350m)

Tidal is a music streaming service that originally started in Scandinavia in 2009. It was called WiMP then. Tidal is under new ownership, and those owners are musicians. Not just Jay Z, but Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Coldplay, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J Cole, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Usher – they all have equity to Tidal too.  It has 25m songs available to stream, but also 75,000 music videos and a team of editors writing features and interviews about established and emerging artists. Unlike Spotify and Deezer, Tidal will not offer a free version of its service supported by advertising. Aspiro has signed deals with all three major labels, as well as independent labels and collecting societies in the US and UK. There are exclusive playlists, some of which have star compilers. 10,000 more have a premium subscription.

Tidal’s key selling point so far has been its “lossless” quality streams, for which the company charges a monthly subscription of £19.99 – double its rivals. It is available in 31 countries, with six more to follow by the end of June. Under Jay Z, Tidal’s strategy will include encouraging artists to lobby their labels to “window” new releases for at least a week, meaning they will be exclusive to Tidal for that period.

Tidal is actually just one piece of a broad strategy to empower artists with their own digital platforms, tools and even the influence of a bigger organisation. The idea is to help make a difference for artists over time.

“People are not respecting the music, and [are] devaluing it and devaluing what it really means. People really feel like music is free, but will pay $6 for water,” said Jay Z in an interview with trade magazine Billboard. 

Spotify - . It has 60 million users, and 15 million of them pay for it. 80% of our subscribers started out as free users,” wrote chief executive Daniel Ek last year. 

Streaming companies do not pay musicians directly; they pay record labels and music publishers, which then pass on whatever percentage of that money each creator’s contract entitles them to. There are two ways musicians can earn more from streaming. The first is organic growth: the more people use these services, the more streams there will be and so the eventual royalty cheques will be bigger.

YouTube is the world’s most popular music streaming service, with a large chunk of its 1 billion monthly viewers watching music videos – especially younger users. It is trying to get people to pay for music too: it’s launching its own Spotify rival, YouTube Music Key, with a similar model of a free, ad-supported tier then a £9.99 monthly subscription with more features. But YouTube is already a free way to listen to almost any song ever recorded. Some in the music industry fear that if Spotify’s free tier is restricted or even shut down, listeners will drift away to YouTube – which pays much less per stream – rather than subscription services. If anything, streaming has proven that the notion of the cohesive album trumps its dematerialization. A great body of music, swallowed whole on Apple Music, Spotify, or, yes, even the despised Tidal, can still captivate and cohere.

Problems:

Cash Money is suing Jay Z’s Tidal streaming service for $50m (£32m), again over an event concerning Lil Wayne. Earlier this month, Lil Wayne’s Free Weezy Album was launched exclusively on Tidal, but Cash Money is claiming the exclusive rights to the rapper’s music, insisting his contract prevents any other organisation releasing his music, TMZ reports.

Last year: “Tidal is doing just fine. We have over 770,000 subs. We have been in business less than one month.” He continued to compare Tidal to the iTunes store which he says “wasn’t built in a day”, and Spotify, which took “9 years to be successful”.

Tidal originally billed itself as a service to deliver “the first artist-owned global music and entertainment platform.” Tidal pays 75% royalty rate to ALL artists, writers and producers – not just the founding members on stage.

April 2015: the Tidal app has sunk in popularity; a new CEO has stepped in. Music margins shrinking, streaming competition intensifying. Tidal has dropped out of the top 700 most downloaded apps in the US download charts, while rival streaming services Spotify and Pandora sit at number three and four. It's the first time two music apps have occupied the top 4 iPhone top 20 download chart, despite the fact that artists such as Jay-Z made their music exclusive to Tidal.

Area for debate remains how we watch videos, overwhelmingly on YouTube; we stream, overwhelmingly, on Spotify; we buy downloads, overwhelmingly, on iTunes, for Tidal are they really differentiating themselves from competitors?

Social media:

·         #TIDALforALL. – Jay-Z, Madonna, Nicki Minaj and Kanye West all used this hashtag

·         Tidal’s website has been counting down to a press conference due to take place at 10pm BST today (Monday 30 March) at which Jay Z is expected to announce his plans for the service. It will be streamed live on the Tidal website

·         The musicians have replaced their Twitter profile pictures and header images with blank blue images – actually turquoise, if we’re being picky – in the kind of coordinated campaign that’s more often used for charitable purposes.

Press conference (pre-release):

Kanye West, Rihanna, Coldplay, Madonna, Alicia Keys, Beyoncé and more threw their weight behind the rapper at a press ­conference last night where he unveiled the new look for Tidal, a streaming site originally launched by Norwegian firm Aspiro in October 2014 and acquired for $56m earlier this month by a company controlled by the music mogul.

It is planned that Tidal will compete with Spotify and upcoming streaming services from Apple and YouTube by offering exclusive music from prominent artists, including studio sessions and demo tracks, while giving them new ways to communicate with fans.

Celebrity endorsements used as a method of promotion can be presented as a unique selling point.

Competitors:

Spotify is currently under pressure from some major music labels, ­Universal Music Group in particular, to convert more of its free users into ­paying ­subscribers. Some artists – including ­Taylor Swift, who pulled her music from Spotify – have also criticised the free streaming model.

Tidal’s long-term plan may be to sign big artists as their label deals run out, in which case it could become a rival not just to Apple and Spotify, but to major labels Universal, Sony and Warner.

Over six months since its launch, Apple's streaming service Apple Music has hit 10 million subscribers. Apple Music launched on 30 June 2015 and had signed up 11 million users by August - however, that was during the three-month free trial period.

Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo stream takes Tidal to top of App Store:

Tidal is now top of the App Store, after Kanye West urged users to subscribe to the troubled streaming app and listen to his new album. The exclusive stream of West’s new album, The Life Of Pablo, and has gone to the top of the App Store since he urged “all music lovers” to subscribe to Tidal.