Ah, TIDAL: the most talked about and least used music streaming service currently on the market. From its very beginnings, the community has consistently mocked, chastised, and ignored Jay Z, deadmau5, Daft Punk and other partners’ attempts to “change the game” by offering high quality streams in exchange for a hilarious monthly price. As his service gradually fades into obscurity, it seems that we’ll continue to receive weekly confirmation that it was never the right idea to begin with.
This week, however, it’s become personal. Much like Sony‘s crooked arrangement with Spotify, TIDAL has been asked to provide enormous advances to labels Sony and Warner in exchange for access to their artists’ work. Although they’ve sealed the deal with Warner, Sony has demanded a price that TIDAL cannot come up with for the time being.
“Tidal was apparently counting on a cash infusion from Sprint to help it pay Sony and Warner’s massive royalty requests but Sprint has specifically said that it has not made a financial investment in Tidal.”
This stalemate is especially significant to TIDAL, however, as it could mean the loss of Beyoncé‘s work: one of the service’s key artists and wife of its founder!
We knew TIDAL was headed for an early grave, but by disallowing Beyoncé’s involvement they are simply kicking Jay Z when he’s already down. As the site’s subscribers slowly jump ship while its leading contributors are removed because of contractual shortcomings, it won’t be long now before we see the inevitable, overly confident and proud tweet from Jay explaining “his choice” for leaving the project. The clock’s ticking.
For an exhaustingly complete and detailed timeline of TIDAL’s short history, click here.
You can also watch deadmau5 explain his reasoning for joining TIDAL and his hopes for the company: here
