Why Jay Z’s Tidal Is a Complete Disaster

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I know this may come as a shock to may of you, but the music streaming biz ain't easy, even if you are Jay Z.

Tidal’s detractors weren’t just the predictably vexatious music bloggers, who described the service as little more than a vehicle for musical plutocrats to line their pockets. The haters also included some of Jay Z’s peers. “They totally blew it by bringing out a bunch of millionaires and billionaires and propping them up onstage and then having them all complain about not being paid.”
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The last sentence in the article:
As Jay Z himself once put it, “I sell ice in the winter. I sell fire in hell. I am a hustler, baby. I sell water to a well.”
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Here's an idea. Don't use polarizing "stars" like Madonna, Kanye, and Nicki Minaj to promote your business. Definitely do NOT put them up on stage and have them whine about how they are not rich enough.
 
Exactly, they are all stinking rich , people don't need to hear that "come use this service so we can screw more money out of you for our redundant crappy music"
 
I actually signed up for the music service as the sound quality is light years ahead of Spotify and Pandora. Spotify Premium and Pandora's paid version sound like dog poo compared to Tidal. I also like the idea of paying the artists more. It's important to me as I learned to appreciate artists more as I watch all of my parent's generation of musicians die. I grew up with music from the 1930s on up as that's what my dad played in the club that he owned when he was 20 or so.

I haven't gotten charged yet though by Tidal. I went for the High Quality service for $20 a month. The only negatives I have with the service is that Spotify has more obscure tracks, and I can find Spotify playlists all over Reddit which make it easier to use initially. I guess I'll keep the Spotify web player around for this purpose.

Youtube beats all services for obscure artists though. SoundCloud has quite a selection of eccentric music that's hard to find. I listen to everything as long as the artist has talent and a grasp of what they want to convey to me. Tidal fits that bill. I hope they can grow and prosper.
 
"Fuck J Z"

- From "The Ether" by Nas

That's what I hear in my head everytime something comes up about Jazzy.
 
cageymaru said:
I haven't gotten charged yet though by Tidal. I went for the High Quality service for $20 a month. The only negatives I have with the service is that Spotify has more obscure tracks, and I can find Spotify playlists all over Reddit which make it easier to use initially. I guess I'll keep the Spotify web player around for this purpose.

Youtube beats all services for obscure artists though. SoundCloud has quite a selection of eccentric music that's hard to find. I listen to everything as long as the artist has talent and a grasp of what they want to convey to me. Tidal fits that bill. I hope they can grow and prosper.
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Grooveshark was really the best for obscure stuff (Youtube aside). I could find most of Akiko Shikata and Ar Tonelico (and other games) OST's on there; granted those aren't necessarily obscure, they're just obscure in the US. Then Grooveshark got closed down. So I went to Spotify for a trial. Nope, not nearly as much... especially in the way of game OST's. Pandora is even worse, and their audio noticeably sucks. Like I can actually hear things getting cut off on an Audioengine D3 paired with Yuin PK2's (work laptop setup). Plus, ads like crazy though thankfully you can skip around those in Firefox by getting Pandora Freemium (Greasemonkey) and uncommenting a certain line in its code.

Now I just listen to edenofthewest and bide my time. If I need any specific obscure track, it's youtube. Youtube has everything, but it's not a terribly convenient music player.
 
I did Tidal's free trial period. The flac quality is really good but still does not justify $20/mo. At that point I'd rather buy CD's and rip my own lossless music. Would definitely sub at $10/mo although increasing their selection wouldn't hurt.
 
Gweenz said:
Here's an idea. Don't use polarizing "stars" like Madonna, Kanye, and Nicki Minaj to promote your business. Definitely do NOT put them up on stage and have them whine about how they are not rich enough.
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If an artist isn't polarizing, they're not successful. That doesn't mean they were good choices for a pay artists campaign, but those that most need to be paid are probably little known bands and that's not going to sell the service either.

cvinh said:
I did Tidal's free trial period. The flac quality is really good but still does not justify $20/mo. At that point I'd rather buy CD's and rip my own lossless music. Would definitely sub at $10/mo although increasing their selection wouldn't hurt.
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20 is too much (but then again, I already buy CDs, rip them to flac and stream them from my server). 10 isn't going to happen. They might do $15, but ultimately if you're going to pay artists more, you have to have a way to increase income so they can pay higher fees to artists.
 
LOL. He did not "unveil" Tidal. He bought it. Then I canceled my subscription.

Tidal was a cool idea. They stream loss-less FLAC. In the clear. With some simple tooling you could save it all to disk, and each stream had metadata.
 
Having to constantly stream music is rather inconvenient. It's not like compressed music is so huge that it's filling up your storage and you listen to the same songs multiple times. I'm still buying audio files.

Jay Z starting a streaming service that's designed to be LESS profitable than it's competition (none of whom were profitable) was never a good idea.
 
The entire service with such big names and egos who pretty would be motivated block rising rival artists is inherently flawed.

Digital Music should be about breaking the Distribution death grip of a handful of music companies so we don't get these crafted almost cartoon like superstar fabrications and music is about music again. And if you still want a multi-talented entertainment fest with drama, there's still Broadway.
 
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Tidal HiFi:

Flac 1411 kbps - Lossless

(16/44.1 khz)
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A compression scheme that needs Redbook bandwidth to stream Redbook audio? Sounds like placebo effect.
 
The part they they all seem to be having a hard time grasping, is that it just is not worth as much as it used to be. The music is just not worth $20 anymore.
 
GORANKAR said:
The part they they all seem to be having a hard time grasping, is that it just is not worth as much as it used to be. The music is just not worth $20 anymore.
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The problem with consumers is that no matter how cheap music is, it's never cheap enough. Remember when the problem was that it cost 20 bucks for a CD (it didn't unless you were a shitty shopper, but that was the complaint)?

OK so it dropped to $10.00...and it was still too much.
Then they wanted all I can eat for a low price.
So Spotify offered it for 10 bucks/month. And most people don't pay.

20 Bucks isn't much if they have a wide selection of music (I have no idea, since I buy music and stream it from my music server).

No matter how cheap it gets, it'll never be cheap enough to compete with free and that's what they've been competing against for almost 15 years.

Music isn't better or worse today -- that's right, the period you love was mostly rubbish.
People just don't want to pay for it.
 
westrock2000 said:
Tidal HiFi:
Flac 1411 kbps - Lossless
(16/44.1 khz)
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A compression scheme that needs Redbook bandwidth to stream Redbook audio? Sounds like placebo effect.
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I'm not sure what the context of that quote is, but FLAC is equivalent to a 1411 kbps stream.
However, if they're saying you need that much bandwidth to stream a song then it's definitely wrong.
 
nilepez said:
The problem with consumers is that no matter how cheap music is, it's never cheap enough. Remember when the problem was that it cost 20 bucks for a CD (it didn't unless you were a shitty shopper, but that was the complaint)?

OK so it dropped to $10.00...and it was still too much.
Then they wanted all I can eat for a low price.
So Spotify offered it for 10 bucks/month. And most people don't pay.

20 Bucks isn't much if they have a wide selection of music (I have no idea, since I buy music and stream it from my music server).

No matter how cheap it gets, it'll never be cheap enough to compete with free and that's what they've been competing against for almost 15 years.

Music isn't better or worse today -- that's right, the period you love was mostly rubbish.
People just don't want to pay for it.
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I am making no comment whatsoever on the "quality" of music from any particular time period. The fact is, that music is not worth what it once was. The market is deciding that, not me. If free is the model they are fighting against, they better figure out another way to monetize it. If they want to continue paying "stars", and the corporate types such large sums of money, then they really have no choice.
 
GORANKAR said:
I am making no comment whatsoever on the "quality" of music from any particular time period. The fact is, that music is not worth what it once was. The market is deciding that, not me. If free is the model they are fighting against, they better figure out another way to monetize it. If they want to continue paying "stars", and the corporate types such large sums of money, then they really have no choice.
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My point is that they are competing against free. And to be honest, even Spotify isn't free enough. It's fine for sampling music, but you have to pay 10 bucks to get rid of commercials. You can download it from a torrent site for free and never listen to ads again.

There is not monetization that works other than getting your song in a commercial, but most bands aren't going to get that.

It's a serious problem. Jay Z's presentation didn't help him, but the idea isn't a bad one and neither is charging more for lossless. The people who want lossless audio are still fairly small and they're willing to pay more for it.

That said, i think it'd make more sense to offer lossless at $15...maybe even start it at 12 and bump it to 13 a year or so down the road.

Hell, try offering it for 15 with a 1 year commitment.
 
Prior to the invention, and wide spread adoption of, recording devices, being paid for performances was the primary, if not sole, way that musicians made money.
 
GORANKAR said:
Prior to the invention, and wide spread adoption of, recording devices, being paid for performances was the primary, if not sole, way that musicians made money.
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Prior to the invention, and wide spread adoption of, recording devices, paying for performances was the primary, if not sole, way of listening to music.
 
GORANKAR said:
Prior to the invention, and wide spread adoption of, recording devices, being paid for performances was the primary, if not sole, way that musicians made money.
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Up and coming bands trying to slug it out at the local venues must compete with DJs playing EDM, and they're losing.

Creating music for popular consumption is really no way to try and make a living these days.
 
I only got basic phones (MDR-V6), but if I'm being honest the difference between the 320AAC and FLAC on Tidal's 'HiFi test' was not nearly as significant as imagined. And I imagine with the earphones that most have, they would probably have some difficulty distinguishing as well.

What Tidal should have done is had a third option, that represents Spotify's 160kbps bit rate haha.
 
maademperor said:
$20 a month!!!!
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I think it's worth it if you have high end audio equipment that will really highlight the difference with lossless compression. And I'd imagine those who who are able to spend thousand of dollars on their audio hardware would have no issues spending extra $10 a month.

For those with budget equipment like myself, Spotify is more than enough:p
 
Hornet said:
I think it's worth it if you have high end audio equipment that will really highlight the difference with lossless compression. And I'd imagine those who who are able to spend thousand of dollars on their audio hardware would have no issues spending extra $10 a month.

For those with budget equipment like myself, Spotify is more than enough:p
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I think that's true, but I don't think you need great equipment. You just need to have decent ears. Ironically those who have better audio equipment have hearing that's inferior to those with lousy equipment.

Bottom line is if you have a DAP (probably a phone) and decent headphones/earbuds, you can hearthe difference.

But again, the difference may not be worth 10 bucks a month.
 
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