While the vast majority of the world were probably sitting back in awe and giving props to Jay-Z and his friends when he announced the launch of his new music streaming service, TIDAL, there were some artists who were not too impressed by it.
In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, Mumford & Sons frontman, Marcus Mumford said that they wouldn’t have joined the streaming site due to its “bias towards only popular artists.” For those who didn’t see the launch last month, Jay-Z announced the service on stage, alongside the likes of Kanye West, Madonna, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Arcade Fire, Jack White, Daft Punk and more.
While British firecracker, Lily Allen mirrored the sentiments by sending out many tweets saying: “I love Jay Z so much, but TIDAL is [so] expensive compared to other perfectly good streaming services… He’s taken the biggest artists & made them exclusive to TIDAL… people are going to swarm back to pirate sites in droves sending traffic to torrent sites.”
The most recent person to join the anti-TIDAL campaign is Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard.
Gibbard who like Mumford was being interviewed by The Daily Beast (unrelated interviews),told the publication just want he thought about the new service.
“If I had been Jay-Z, I would have brought out ten artists that were underground or independent and said, ‘These are the people who are struggling to make a living in today’s music industry. Whereas this competitor streaming site pays this person 15 cents for X amount of streams, that same amount of streams on my site, on TIDAL, will pay that artist this much.’ 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,” said Gibbard.
“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 rate. And they didn’t do it. That’s why this thing is going to fail miserably.”
The Verge also point out in an article, that Jay-Z and TIDAL might have a secret weapon under their puffy jackets; Live Nation.
In other news, TIDAL premium is priced at $9.99 (USD) per month while TIDAL HiFi is priced at $19.99 (USD) per month and Jay-Z has officially taken down his debut album Reasonable Doubt, with the exception of one song, from Spotify.
Talk Music To Me 