Will Jay Z's Tidal Make Waves or Just a Ripple?

Yet another music streaming service has arrived on the scene where you can stream unlimited music to a number of different devices for a monthly fee and also aims to dethrone Spotify, but what alternative does it actually offer the typical music lover?

If you read between the lines of the somewhat pretentious speech by Alicia Keys and co with sound bites such where music is described as a “universal language” and how Tidal can be “a moment that will forever change the course of music history.” There are only 2 stand out features that Tidal actually offers.

In simple terms Spotify currently offers music by compressing MP3’s whereas Tidal is concentrating on delivering audio of CD quality and the other unique selling point is that Tidal proudly protect artists by paying them double the royalties offered by Spotify.

Talk of a music revolution where artists are paid double their royalties from a new service that is $20 a month (double that of Spotify) feels that the only people being punished in the name of protecting artistry are the fans rather than record labels or corporations.

For me personally, their biggest selling point could end up being Tidal’s Achilles heel because witnessing Jay Z and 15 other multimillionaire stars who all have a stake in the music streaming service feels incredibly self-serving and more about making established celebrities richer than helping struggling up and coming artists.

As for the 'High Fidelity' lossless audio that gives people the ability to stream music from around 400kbps (Spotify Premium offers 320kbps) up to around 1,400kbps, the big question is will the average user be able to tell the difference on the number 79 train with a pair of Apple earphones?

Audiophile’s can take a test to check if this increased audio quality is worth changing their allegiance to Tidal, but I suspect that to fully appreciate this improvement, an investment into a pair of headphones costing much more than your yearly music subscription to reap any real benefits.

For any artist who is trying to get recognised, the key to their success is determined by making sure their music is available on every possible platform available so they can be discovered, but locking more established acts behind a $20 a month paywall will only look after those acts and their millions.

Very often, it feels like we are spoon-fed a handful of artists that we are all supposed to listen to, but the real success around services such as Last.fm, Hype Machine or even Spotify is that together they enable music lovers to discover emerging talent via a discovery platform that represents the artistry more than a stage of 15 millionaires ever will.

We are now living in a world where a NetFlix subscription costs a fraction of the price of Tidal, whilst most would agree that movies cost considerably more to make than an album and yet here is Madonna telling everyone to protect her art by paying $20 a month subscription along with $200 to see her in concert. How is this business model looking after anyone other than established artists?

Although this service is clearly not suitable for everyone, if you have expensive audio equipment and a big fan of artists such as Jay Z, Kanye West, Beyonce, Madonna, Daft Punk, Rihanna, Usher, Nicki Minaj, Jack White, Calvin Harris or Alicia Keys then Tidal is tailor-made for you.

However if you have a more eclectic taste and happy soaking up something by a new unheard artist on your $30 earphones during your commute to work and maybe even support that same artist by going to see them in a smaller more intimate venue then there are probably more sensible options at your disposal.

The most interesting aspect of the Tidal launch could be the heavy use of Social Media where the rather transparent tactic seemed to consist of creating an army of the most followed celebrity Tweeters to make the most noise to the maximum number of followers at the same time.

This worked perfectly as #TidalForAll trended on twitter all over the world, but they failed to realise what can happen when followers react to sales pitches on their timelines.

Are you considering switching to the Tidal service and happy to pay extra for a higher sound quality?

Please let me know your thoughts about this venture and how you listen to music in 2015.

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Thanks for reading. You can find my previous LinkedIn articles here and you can also connect on Twitter at @neilchughes or contact me via my site Technology Blog Writer where I help businesses with company blogs.

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