It was launched at a star-studded event where Daft Punk came in full costume, Alicia Keys quoted Nietzsche and Madonna mounted a table while wearing tight leather trousers.
But despite its extravagant beginnings, Tidal, the music-streaming service fronted by Jay Z and with the backing of artists including Kanye West and Rihanna, is showing signs of failure.
Less than a month after some of the biggest names in music declared Tidal would be the salvation of the industry, the app has dropped out of the iPhone top 700 downloads chart.
The news will be an embarrassment to the service, which Jay Z and co-owners including Beyoncé, Jack White and Usher pledged would become a challenger to streaming platforms such as Spotify and Pandora.
Jay Z acquired Aspiro, the company behind Tidal, in March for $56m (£37m), in a takeover bid that was almost rejected by a group of minority shareholders. Talking about his vision for the service , the multimillionaire rapper said he and his roster of celebrity supporters wanted Tidal to be the first artist-owned music streaming platform that would pay 75% of its revenues back to the music industry (compared with the 50% paid by Spotify and Pandora).
Jay Z said: “We didn’t like the direction music was going and thought maybe we could get in and strike an honest blow and if the very least we did was make people wake up and try to improve the free paid system, and promote fair trade, then it would be a win for us anyway.”
It was a view echoed by Keys, who told the press conference: “We’re gathered … with one voice in unity in the hopes that today will be another one of those moments in time, a moment that will forever change the course of music history.”
But despite the celebrity fanfare, the early signs of failure of Tidal may not come as a surprise to many others within the music community who have been more cynical about the service’s prospects.
To begin with, Tidal comes with a higher price tag than its rivals, costing $20 a month, and does not have the free, ad-supported option offered by services such as Spotify. For this higher subscription fee, Tidal users have access to 25m tracks, about the same number as Spotify, but it also offers a lossless high-fidelity sound quality that its competitors don’t have, as well as HD music videos and music playlists curated by musicians such as Jay Z and Beyoncé.
But music industry commentators have argued that this is not enough to encourage people to part with more than the £4.99 it currently costs for unlimited, ad-free streaming on Spotify or the £9.99 for full premium access.
Indeed, while Tidal has fallen spectacularly down the app charts in the past month, both Spotify and Pandora have soared to take third and fourth places in the charts, the first time two music streaming services have hit the top four in sales simultaneously – even displacing the addictive game Candy Crush.
Bob Lefsetz, the leading music critic and industry analyst, said Tidal did not have what it takes to dominate the already crowded streaming market, which is set to get even more congested this year when Apple and YouTube both launch streaming platforms.
Writing in his weekly newsletter, Lefsetz said: “Why was Spotify successful? Because of the deep pockets of the owners, who were willing to lose on the way to winning. Beats Music did not have these deep pockets, and Tidal certainly does not. Unless the artists are all willing to kick in double-digit millions, out of their fortunes, to turn the tide.”
The main issue, he added, was that not even Jay Z’s name and hip-hop credentials were enough to make people pay more money to stream music.
“First and foremost you’ve got to pay for Tidal. And therefore it’s dead on arrival. Just like Apple’s new music service. Because people are cheap. They love their money more than their favourite artists, never forget it. Now if Tidal had a free tier … But it doesn’t. It can’t afford to lose that much money. Just because Jay Z is a famous musician he expects all of his fans to pony up 10 bucks a month? Raw insanity.”
Tidal’s problems have not been helped by numerous administrative difficulties. Just two weeks after the service’s launch in March, the chief executive, Andy Chen, was replaced by Peter Tonstad, who, according to the company, had a “better understanding of the industry and a clear vision for how the company is looking to change the status quo”.
Yet it is not just consumers that Tidal has struggled to convince; the service has also garnered criticism from numerous musicians, who claim it only helps the Madonnas and Jay Zs of this world, and smaller bands and emerging artists will not reap any benefits.
Marcus Mumford, the lead singer of Mumford and Sons, told the NME that the band wouldn’t join Tidal even if asked. “Bigger bands have other ways of making money, so I don’t think you can complain,” he said. “When they say it’s artist-owned, it’s owned by those rich, wealthy artists. I don’t want to align myself with Spotify, Beats, Tidal, or whatever.”
Ben Gibbard, the lead singer of US indie band Death Cab for Cutie, was equally scornful that musicians such as Jay Z, who is worth $560m, and Madonna, who is worth $800m, were attempting to play on people’s sympathies for struggling artists to get on board with Tidal.
“I think 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,” Gibbard told the Daily Beast.
“There was a wonderful opportunity squandered to highlight what this service would mean for artists who are struggling and to make a plea to people’s hearts and pocketbooks to pay a little more for this service that was going to pay these artists a more reasonable streaming rate. And they didn’t do it. That’s why this thing is going to fail miserably.”
Lily Allen has also expressed concerns that the high price of Tidal will only encourage people to pirate more music. Writing on Twitter, the singer said: “Tidal is so expensive compared to other perfectly good streaming services. He’s taking the biggest artists, made them exclusive to Tidal … People are going to swarm back to pirate sites in droves. Up and coming (not yet millionaires) artists are going to suffer as a result.”
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