Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
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Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#2The plan was unveiled on Monday at a brief but highly choreographed news conference in Manhattan, where Jay Z stood alongside more than a dozen musicians identified as Tidal’s owners. They included Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Jack White, Alicia Keys, the country singer Jason Aldean, the French dance duo Daft Punk (in signature robot costumes), members of Arcade Fire, and Beyoncé, Jay Z’s wife.
That's a lot of cooks!
Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#3The plan was unveiled on Monday at a brief but highly choreographed news conference in Manhattan, where Jay Z stood alongside more than a dozen musicians identified as Tidal’s owners. They included Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Jack White, Alicia Keys, the country singer Jason Aldean, the French dance duo Daft Punk (in signature robot costumes), members of Arcade Fire, and Beyoncé, Jay Z’s wife. That's a…
I think what's interesting is that this in intended to give artists buy-in to the streaming service. If they can get enough exclusive material and artists, I could see it take off. A few months ago I remember reading a post by an artist that said this is the only way for artists to get their fair share, but no one was big enough to tackle it, maybe Jay Z is the guy to do it?
Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#4I don't know if the world is ready for this kind of thing. As an audiophile I think it is great that we're going to get access to a trove of lossless music, but I think the majority who is happy listening to music through their iPhone earphones and tinny speakers in their smartphones won't care (especially not enough to pay double the cost of a Spotify subscription).
Then there is the kind of internet speed required to stream lossless music. For those who have FLAC's in their music collection know that an album is hundreds of megabytes compared to a V0 rip which is only usually around the 75 to 100mb mark (depending on length and tracks). Now imagine streaming a track that is upwards of 20mb+? Here in Australia we have poor internet, we're ranked pretty low. I already struggle to stream 320kbps from Spotify Premium on my connection. The story is the same in New Zealand and other parts of the world. Then you have the bandwidth limitation, a lossless streaming platform would chew through potentially gigabytes of data (in Australia we still have bandwidth caps and we get speed limited or charged extra for going over them).
Then there is the subject of modern music production. Sad to say it, but most modern music is so overproduced and compressed during the mixing stage that it doesn't matter if you're listening to a 128kbps MP3 or lossless, it won't sound any better. Most music is destroyed in the studio before it is even released, therefore not worthy of listening to in any high bitrate format. If you want to debate this, I implore you to read up on "the loudness wars" in which it has been pretty documented that music is getting louder and the louder it gets, the lower the quality is (as the dynamics and peaks are stripped out).
I think Tidal is great, but I am very sceptical that it will address the issues people currently have with Spotify, more specifically how it pays out royalties. I do think there is a serious lack of strong music platforms that encourage discovery. As great as Spotify is, it doesn't let me fluidly discover new music. Rather I find myself clicking through related artists which feels counter-intuitive considering how much music and music data there is out there. Tidal very much comes across to me as a platform built by a rich music industry hotshot, backed by equally big and established artists who have sold millions.
I would love to see the idea of a VIP backstage feature incorporated into a platform like this. You can pay a monthly subscription fee to subscribe to an artist and in return get access to a members only area with exclusive early release music, discount merchandise, pre-release concert tickets, a chat feature/Q&A and other member only private features. I think something like that could work really well for large groups like One Direction and artists like Justin Bieber especially. Seems like a logic additional revenue stream for large and small artists alike.
It is a really nice idea, coupled with the exclusives component as well, but I just don't think the majority cares enough about music quality as a select few do. Most people cannot probably even hear the difference between lossless and a 320 MP3 (especially considering they're listening on prosumer equipment like iPhones and MacBooks). I would definitely use this if it had some classic artists on here, 60's/70's rock and blues that wasn't overproduced and would sound great lossless (like Led Zeppelin's earlier material or The Beatles especially).
Metallica's Death Magnetic album - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Magnetic#Criticism_regard... is definitely not going to sound any better if it finds its way onto the Tidal platform, that is for sure.
Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#5“This is a platform that’s owned by artists,” - Jay Z
I think he meant, "This is a platform owned by established, rich, and ageing artists, whose resolve to assist up-and-comers should rightfully be questioned."
Not to say this can be any worse then something like Spotify, which already trounces over the independents, but I hardly think this is a likely group to bring democracy and creativity back to the musical scene.
Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#6They might have a chance if these big name artists, and their record companies, agree to pull their music from all the other services.
Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#7“This is a platform that’s owned by artists,” - Jay Z I think he meant, "This is a platform owned by established, rich, and ageing artists, whose resolve to assist up-and-comers should rightfully be questioned." Not to say this can be any worse then something like Spotify, which already trounces over the independents, but I hardly think this is a likely group to bring democracy and creativity back to the musical scen…
> I think he meant, "This is a platform owned by established, rich, and ageing artists, whose resolve to assist up-and-comers should rightfully be questioned."
An actual artist-owned platform (a co-operative model where artists = shareholders) would actually be pretty awesome.
Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#8I'd pay $20/month or more for a service that:
* had high quality streams
* had gigantic library
* _biggest of all_ cracked the 'discovery' nut.
I listen to music all day, I don't like to listen to the same tracks more than a few times so I have a hard time keeping my queue full.
I'm a Spotify subscriber so I'll find an artist I think is interesting, play their whole discography and then start digging into 'related artists' to find new stuff.
This is a bit of a drag and is hit or miss. I don't necessarily want to find related music, but music that I might like. Spotify's radio feature is just about useless. Voting one way or the other will skew it to play pretty much _only_ the thumbs up'ed artist or avoid a genre entirely if you thumbs down a particular track.
I still think there is a killer music service waiting to be born. I don't think Tidal will be it.
Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#9“This is a platform that’s owned by artists,” - Jay Z I think he meant, "This is a platform owned by established, rich, and ageing artists, whose resolve to assist up-and-comers should rightfully be questioned." Not to say this can be any worse then something like Spotify, which already trounces over the independents, but I hardly think this is a likely group to bring democracy and creativity back to the musical scen…
When artists make it big, don't they usually start their own labels anyways? We also have rich artists very active in the music industry, providing capital and such...I mean, it is the industry they known and succeeded in!
This is sort of like a programmer who made it big in an IPO becoming a venture capitalist for software tech companies: I'm sure that has happened before.
Re: Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service
#10Here's the problem: I don't want another music service. I want all my favorite artists on one music service. There is literally no reason for them to not be other than various forms of greed.
Garth Brooks created his own music streaming service because the people behind the album don't get enough attention. Taylor Swift doesn't put her music on Spotify because she can make more money on iTunes. Jay Z creates a streaming service to put out higher quality music files at a higher price. The result? I don't listen to their music even though I really want to (I know Jay Z is still on Spotify).
Hey Taylor, this isn't 2005, where I would buy a bunch of MP3s from anywhere and put them on my iPod. I don't store music locally, hardly anyone does. Apple doesn't even make a large-disk iPod anymore. Likewise, how many people are going to be willing to subscribe to multiple music sources like they do Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon?
You have a problem with Spotify? Work with them. Let's ask Sony how they fared coming up with Crackle instead of using Netflix.