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JAY Z WAS joined by a plethora of celebs last night at the launch of his new streaming service Tidal.
But is it the saviour of the music industry, or just an excuse for rich musicians to make even more bucks?
Music listeners, it appears, are divided on that very question.
We’ve got all the details on Tidal right here, but in essence it is a paid-for service that offers better quality streaming of music.
Think Spotify, but not free, (it costs €19.99 per month) and with better-sounding (CD-quality, lossless files) music and videos.
Though seeing as these days we’re used to listening to music at varying quality levels, the latter isn’t important to everyone.
Think about those teens you see on buses playing music out loud: they’re not bothered about the quality, as long as they can connect with their favourite song.
It’s the emotional response they’re most motivated by, and that’s the reason why people go to YouTube or Spotify if they want to listen to a song quickly and easily.
Tidal is co-owned by Jay Z, Beyonce, Daft Punk, Alicia Keys and Madonna, and a host of other major players are involved.
They want an artist-run company, which benefits the artists themselves. They want it to be revolutionary, to change the status quo, to “reestablish the value of music” and to bring fans together.
(If this sounds in any way familiar, by the way, remember the legendary Neil Young launched Pono, which also focused on quality of sound.)
Well, the fact it was launched by mega-rich superstars didn’t go unnoticed, with many questioning exactly how it would benefit independent or smaller musicians.
With Tidal, there is the issue of payment. With so much free content online, will people actually pay for the service?
The music industry has changed hugely since even the ‘home taping is killing music’ campaigns (note – home taping didn’t kill music).
Spotify has 60m users, of which 15m are paid-for subscribers. It’s clear people prefer – if given a choice – not to pay for streaming, even if that does mean they have to put up with ads.
But ad-supported streaming generates less revenue than subscription services, as the Financial Times pointed out earlier this year.
Artists don’t earn huge wads from Spotify unless they get tons of plays, given that it pays between $0.006c and $0.0084c per stream.
Spotify’s royalty pay out has gone up as it has begun to rake in more money itself, meaning it has paid out $2bn since 2009. But that’s across a lot of artists.
Spotify argues its users are more willing to spend money on music:
The average amount of money spent by US adults on music is $25, whereas the average Spotify user is worth $41 (our total revenue divided by our total # of users). Simply put, a Spotify customer is 1.6x more financially valuable than the average adult non-Spotify US music consumer.
One independent artist, Zoe Keating, said that she earned $1,764 in 2013 from 403,035 streams on Spotify.
She’s at the opposite end of the spectrum to Thom Yorke, whose band Radiohead embraced technology and downloading by selling their album In Rainbows in 2007 using a ‘pay what you want’ model.
Yorke, however, is fervently anti-Spotify, saying that musicians should “fight” it. His band Atoms for Peace pulled their albums from Spotify.
This aspect of the whole debate, the ‘what would help new and independent artists’? is key when talking about sites like Tidal.
The music game has changed, the music industry has changed, and even listening habits have changed.
But people still make music, bands are still formed, and people still dedicate their time to creating songs. How they earn a crust from this creative pursuit has long been a topic for discussion, but never more so than in today’s era, when anything is available online for free.
Should – and will – Tidal try and help out newer artists, giving them a platform to earn money through streaming, or is that changing the game somewhat?
Time will tell what the site will offer to musicians outside of the multi-million-dollar-earning set.
For now, the listeners are having their say.
To counter that, some pointed that while music may be seen as a ‘free’ commodity these days, that’s not because people aren’t willing to spend money.
As for Tidal’s ‘right-on’, revolutionary message, there are people who don’t think it’s revolutionary in any form… and that it may have forgotten one thing: the fans.
Gawker called the event out on its sheer weirdness:
Which, given that two of the participants were on Skype, and Madonna straddled the table while signing the ‘proclamation’ isn’t totally off-point:
While, we do admire Madge’s ability to add drama into even the most boring of activities, the launch did demonstrate the star power of this brand new service.
That’s what people have been saying about Tidal, but what about you – will you be signing up?
Tell us what you think in the comments.
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Settings -> Personalization -> Make sure “occasionally show suggestions in Start” is switched to Off.
No ads in start menu.
Until they remove the option or an update sets it to “Default”
I upgraded to it and about an hour later downgraded back to windows 7, way too many apps for my liking, keep it to what you know #simple
And I thought I was the only one. I really disliked Windows 10 so much I’ve decided to completely convert to Apple.
You will find OS X very frustrating then. You will experience many many problems on the Mac that never seem to make it the press. Also, constant pressure to take the free OS upgrades that frequently means that some of your apps need to be upgraded at cost. Mac computers slow down FASTER than Windows and there is little you can do about it. I write this as I use both systems every day. Enjoy hating Windows 10 for now. In a years time you I’ll enjoy hating OSX.
Windows 10 is a disaster and when I tried to change back to Windows 7 whole system crashed!
Noel. Did you ring Windows support team?
Well there was always going to be a catch with free software, but it’s still a bit despicable that the start menu is going to consist mainly of promoted apps that they want you to download.
Just use Linux Mint
While Mint is shiny and lovely, and would be my default choice, one word kills it…
Games!
This will be microsoft last major version of windows. All future versions will be done through minor upgrades to Windows 10. Once Windows 7 and maybe 8 go end of life, Windows 10 will become software as a service and you will be forced by mickiesoft to pay a subscription to continue using it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/05/08/microsoft-windows-10-last-windows/#22c1a9c968de
As with all computer software products. Apple will be best at it.
That’s when they will slowly die, they’re making their money for other services that they offer like office 365 and OneDrive, yes SaaS is the way forward that is cloud computing and vendors love it as it kills piracy straight out since everything is on their servers but can’t see an OS succeeding in that when you look at Linux is open source and Apple OS is free as well.
What makes you think that ?
They are best at closed systems. MS just learning from them.
Remember the time Linux Mint got hacked? http://www.safetyonline.info/?p=490. You’d want to hope this won’t happen again!
Nothing is a 100% secure
Steam..
I still have windows 7 on my laptop.
That’s nice. And what did you have for lunch?
Hopefully his lunch wasn’t from 2009 like his OS.
Maybe the wine was.
People who prefer windows 7 to 10 really have fundamental misunderstanding of what makes a decent OS. And honestly, how many people open their start menu for more than a few seconds to start typing the command they want?
Jesus people will complain about anything.
Welcome to Ireland. Let me introduce you to the locals…
Who has forgotten that the customer is always right?
Have windows 7 ultimate 64bit. The most stable Microsoft OS since 2000 professional. I won’t be upgrading, thanks.
Yet another reason I went to Mac. MS sucks!!!!!!
You went to Mac with its massively overpriced hardware instead of just throwing Linux Mint (or whatever distro you like) onto your IBM spec machine??
Well done you.
You will find the Apple OS X will mirror the problems you had with MS, with some very poor software to boot. :) Enjoy. When saving a file on an Apple OS X app try navigating through folders! Good luck with it. O yes, you will do what all OS X users do, quietly buy an app for 30euro to make it easier. If MS Windows has the same poor navigation system the world would be up-in-arms. As its Apple OS X – well better not say a word. Good luck with the free OS X updates. You find that some of your apps will no longer work or at best you will need to pay to update them. Noa word to anyone. Good luck with all the small add-ons you have to buy. Good luck with stopping iPhotos from taking over all your images whether you like it or not. Good luck with trying to write a long document in Pages or create a spreadsheet in Numbers. All LEGO apps in my mind. Put a few folders and loose files on your Desktop and watch OS X slow down. OS X wants pretty much everthing put in the Documents folder. its all ahead of you. All the MS moaners on the Journal should try a week on a Apple PC. They may not find it worst than MS Windows, just different but with its only set of issues that Apple OS X users prefer to remain silent about.
I haven’t found ANY of those problems Paul, seriously. I switched from PC to Mac over 6 years ago and have never looked back. If you want to learn how to fix a computer, buy a PC. If you want to learn now to use a computer, then buy a Mac. I worked in IT with PC’s for over 10 years, never want to use one again if I can avoid it. Different strokes for different folks I suppose. XP and 7 were good OS’s. 8 and 10 are horrible.
I tried Windows 10 but hate it & return to 8 thought I keep getting 10 request every time I open it. Like harassment. I plan switch to Apple laptop because I’ve iPad & iPhone those performances were brilliant!
Google it. It gives you instructions to delete files and stop notifications. Can watch tutorial on you tube!
It’s worth the time and effort!
I too hate windows 10 and reverted back to Windows 8. Had to go all technical to stop Windows from sending me update to Windows 10 requests
Hi Lily. Would you be able to tell me how u stopped the requests or is it really technical? I’m not going to upgrade, I’m very happy with Windows 7, so would love the requests to stop.
Like to buy my 99 Mercury then?
Mercedes……
Sorry was at work, I did make a comment below about googling it (that’s what I did) and followed instructions, I don’t have a clue what I did so explaining it would be a bit hard. Did that about 3 months ago and not one single update.
That’s grand – I’ll have a go at google and see how it goes. Thanks :-)
I’m sticking with 7 for as long as possible, then I’m switching to Linux. Probably Ubuntu.
I wonder if I deleted the right registry key then???
6 year old Dell Latitude running Win 10 on a SSD (€50) & using open DNS for browsing (UPC DNS causes lag), it’s the fastest pc I have ever used & won’t be changing anytime soon!
have your say