Jay Z’s efforts with TIDAL may have been in vain, but he did make some good points during the service’s muddled launch. Dre, for example, still keeps all of his music exclusively on Apple Music, and Prince famously denied the platform his work until his death. Some big names have yet to accept Spotify.

Basically, almost everyone.Īrt artists in the right for not liking Spotify? That’s great news for those of us who are Spotify Premium members but not TIDAL customers. Jay Z and a handful of other artists began hoarding their work as TIDAL exclusives in an effort to increase consumer appetite but, after several years of plateauing subscriber numbers, it looks like he may finally have caved to the mass appeal of Spotify. Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: TIDAL | #TIDALforALL ()

Check out the like and dislike ratio, too. To demonstrate my point, watch the first announcement trailer from 2015 below and try hard not cringe at the lack of self-awareness from all involved. The CEO position at the company has switched hands over four times in five years, and accusations of inflated subscriber numbers and late payments to artists have left it steadily trailing far behind every other competitor. Unfortunately for Jay Z and his investors, TIDAL’s launch was marred by a misguided ad campaign, a terribly glitchy and unreliable app, and expensive entry prices.

In case you’re not up to speed, TIDAL is a rival streaming service set up and owned by Jay-Z that supposedly offers artists better royalty payments, as well as higher quality audio streams over Spotify or Apple Music. There isn’t an official reason, at least not yet.īut even a brief glimpse at TIDAL’s performance over the last decade will give you some likely clues. Why has Jaz Z brought his music back for Spotify users?

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