It was a tiny player in the music-streaming world, and nobody paid much attention to it.īy the end of March, Aspiro had become one of the most talked-about technology companies in the world. It had grown up in the years before the iPhone, providing services for Nokia and Ericsson feature phones. It's the line-up of world-famous musicians that has been Tidal's biggest selling point, but, as one streaming expert told us, it could also be its undoing.Īt the start of January, before Jay Z got his hands on it, Aspiro AB was a niche European media-technology company known mainly for its high-end, expensive music-streaming service called WiMP. Which I like, now that I understand the vision."Ĭlearly, Jay Z has influence in the music industry, and he has used that power to assemble an all-star cast for his streaming service. "It's sort of an old-school record store. "I get it much better now," lead singer Marcus Mumford said. The band referred to Jay Z and his fellow Tidal supporters as "new school f- plutocrats," but they changed their minds after a phone call from one of the most powerful men in rap music. He also called up the band Mumford & Sons, who previously criticised Tidal in an interview. They wanted to emphasise that Tidal was all about a personal connection between musicians and their fans.īut Jay Z didn't stop there. Some of Jay Z's musician friends also made calls, including Jack White. "This is the best customer service call I’ve ever received," one fan exclaimed. Staff at Roc Nation, Jay Z's sports- and entertainment-management company, listened as fans reacted with shock to phone calls from Jay Z. Unfair, but true.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It’ll be interesting to see whether the illegal piracy numbers re-spike if that comes to pass. Taylor Swift and several label execs have argued recently against the “free” portion of Spotify and YouTube. Yes, music has value - and today, that value is $1.29 for a song download, $10 to $12 for an album download, $10 per month for a premium subscription or free for an ad-supported digital subscription. But White can’t possibly be yearning for the good, old days of $18 CDs, can he? It wasn’t like those economics were good for artists, either. And $78 for his monthly music and movie budget back then amounts to $123 in today’s dollars. What did that cost? Same as today with inflation?” I also went to the movies three times a month. White: “I used to buy three records a month at $18 a piece when I was a teenager bussing tables. That’s not bad, although Bryan himself likely walked away with $900,000, and that’s only if you assume he has a Michael Jackson-level royalty rate. If expenses were “millions,” net receipts drop to a minimum of $3.6 million. If that album went for $10, Bryan’s label would have taken in $5.6 million (assuming the retailer, such as iTunes, took the standard 30 percent). White didn’t name names, but last year’s biggest country album, Luke Bryan’s Crash My Party, sold 800,000 copies (not counting singles or Nielsen Soundscan’s “track-equivalent albums”). White: “People know that it costs a lot of money to make a super hero movie, but they don’t know that it costs millions to make a country album too.” So White’s poor punk band receives between $30 and $100 in this scenario. Music industry sources say YouTube videos pay between 60 cents and $2 for every 1,000 views, assuming the artists agree to advertisements. White: “I’m talking about the punk band that has 50k hits on Youtube and doesn’t see a dime.” That 2 percent revenue difference is symbolically important, but won’t make much difference, at least for now, in artists’ royalty statements. Jay Z recently said Tidal has 770,000 paid subscribers compared to Spotify’s 15 million. Spotify pays approximately 60 percent of its revenue to rightsholders (plus 10 percent to publishers), including record labels, while sources say Tidal plans to boost that number to 62 percent (plus 10 percent to publishers). White: “I’m aiming to get unknown artists paid so that they can make more music.” We fact-checked the quasi-FAQ to separate the truth from the fiction: White also added a couple of misleading statements and half-truths among his Tidal proselytizing. He said several awesome things - “Digital in the car, Vinyl in the bedroom, baby” - but also seemed overly enamored with the good, old days of $18 CDs, which not even record executives defend these days. Jack White, one of several celebrity co-owners of Jay Z’s recently relaunched Tidal streaming service, took to his website Wednesday to respond to fans’ criticism about the service and comment about music industry economics.
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