Do You Really Want To Put More Money In Their Pockets?
Supporting the 1%
Yesterday, Jay-Z made it official concerning his much hyped launch into streaming digital media with his star studded entourage for TIDAL. After clearing up a few objections from minor shareholders, Jay-Z’s first major act after successfully buying WiMP and was later rebranded as TIDAL. Jay-Z has brought a lot of superstar power to attempt to make as big a splash as possible with Tidal. But, will Tidal be able to create the big splashes in the open oceans of music media or will it once again WiMP out and be just a small ripple in the pool?
Jay-Z's $56m WiMP TIDAL acquisition got him a streaming provider that actually lost 11% of its subscribers last year, of whom 77% are tied up in Telco bundles and that has a total global subscriber market share of about 1%. The TIDAL part of the company has just 6,000 subscribers.
Many of the stars on stage didn't seem very excited. In fact, most of them looked like they were there as merely puppets of the performance. It was almost like they knew something that the rest of us don't know. What we do know is that Jay-Z is shoveling bucket loads of money into TIDAL and most of that money is an attempt to add personality to the streaming service by adding a star studded cast of artists and even making them shareholders of the company.
TIDAL, who's beginnings started October of 2014, is NOT the "first ever artist owned global music entertainment platform" as Alica Keys stated in her speech. In fact, UNIR1® which started in 2011 is owned and operated by an independent artist that has a network of radio and television stations that are primarily owned and operated by several different independent artists and program directors, who also have the opportunity to become part of the company as affiliates.
It is apparent that many of the star studded cast will use TIDAL as their new launching pad for new releases. This will ultimately make the company a premium brand and put the star studded cast on a path to make even more money as the owners of TIDAL take a greedy 80% of the cut. You know, the 1% of the music industry that owns everything? Doesn't leave much room for change in this industry or the little guy trying to make ends meet.
It is unclear what TIDAL will do for independent artists if anything at all. What is clear is that Jay Z and the rest of the multi million dollar award winning cast of stars will gain even more money by pigging backing off a platform that has been in existence well before TIDAL and well before WiMP was even thought of.
Even more evident is that consumers will have to deal with yet another streaming service that plays the same saturated music that you hear everyday on Pandora, Spotify and all the way down to the FM dial. Although, TIDAL's claim is to create a better service and a better experience for both fans and artists, we notice that TIDAL really has nothing better to offer than what other streaming services have been attempting to create now for the past 8 years. Their are no apparent benefits for new and aspiring artists and really no solutions to fix any of the problems currently facing the music industry today. The benefits clearly are for the star studded share holders to capitalize on new releases of their music, and line their pockets with fresh revenue.
After (2) years of planning, one failure and coming into the game a bit late, it will be interesting to see if TIDAL can make enough waves with its star studded cast of share holders to achieve everything it "vaguely" says it is set out to do. Although this platform is clearly for the elite 1%, we welcome TIDAL to the streaming world of music. Jay Z and the rest of the stars will need a lot of luck in an already established and highly saturated market.
Of course, you know the old saying, "If you can't beat them, join them."
UNIR1Radio.com
Do You Really Want To Put More Money In Their Pockets?
