The innovative music-centered streaming service “TIDAL”
Major Key, a project-oriented team of five #AD&PRLab students tells its stories in the world of entrepreneurship, start-ups, innovation and digital creativity, all through the lens of #StartupLab.
What’s Tidal?
During the Startup Lab sessions of #AD&PRLab, we were assigned to research different initiatives in the world of the music industry, and our service of choice was Tidal.
Tidal is a subscription-centered music, podcast and video streaming service that combines lossless audio and high-definition music videos with exclusive content and special features on music, provided by artists assigned to Tidal and its team of curators.
Tidal was launched back in 2014 by the Norwegian public company Aspiro. Today, the service has over 60 million tracks and 240,000 music videos. Tidal claims to pay the highest percentage of royalties to music artists and songwriters/producers within the music streaming market, while also offering two different levels of digital music streaming service: Tidal Premium and Tidal HiFi. Aspiro first launched the Tidal brand in the UK, the US, and Canada on 28/10/2014. The launch was supported by Sonos and 15 other home audio manufacturers as integrations partners. In January 2015, Tidal launched in five more European countries: Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It is currently available in 52 countries worldwide. Tidal is currently owned by Jay-Z and a variety of other successful music artists, making it the first artist-owned streaming service in the world. The idea of an artist-owned streaming platform was stated as to “restore the value to music by launching a service owned by artists.” Jay-Z himself, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Daft Punk, Jack White, Madonna, Arcade Fire, Alicia Keys, Usher, Chris Martin, Calvin Harris, deadmau5, Jason Aldean and J. Cole were introduced to the stage as “the owners of TIDAL”.
The Pros and the Cons
Tidal was the first music-streaming service to offer its songs at higher-than-MP3 quality, meaning that — in theory — it should sound significantly better than Spotify, Apple Music, et al.
To gain access you must sign up to the £20-a-month Tidal HiFi tier, which gives you unlimited access to the higher-quality lossless streams. There’s also a regular Tidal Premium offering that at half the price, but it maxes out at 320kbps, so it’s the former we’re testing here. The big question is: does it really sound twice as good as all the others?
Firstly, Tidal is the best-sounding streaming service by far (rated and reviewed accordingly). It also offers an excellent selection of well-curated playlists and elegant design, all providing usability and an aesthetically pleasing ecosystem of music and multimedia.
On the other hand, the app is expensive in comparison to other similar apps and the biggest drawback is the highest quality tracks are only available on desktop. Furthermore, lossless streaming puts strain on your mobile usage and mobile data usage.
Tidal’s Innovation
In general, today’s market of music streaming services is generally frowned up due to the amount of money paid to artists, which is rather low per stream (Spotify, for example). What makes Tidal innovative, regarding this issue, is that due to its high price, it respects the work of its artists and pays them accordingly. Jay-Z even stated that he’d rather pay the artists the amount of money they deserve through the platform of Tidal, even if that means a loss of money for the owners of the streaming service. Although many have debated the reality of such statements and how efficient this business model is, Tidal attempts to solve the biggest drawback of today’s streaming services, at least in theory.
Well-paid streams, along with exclusive content (Rihanna’s and Beyonce’s respective albums back in 2016) sets apart the service from its competitors, at least in terms of the quality of services provided. Last but not least, many of the previously referred artists actively engage in the creative and artistic direction of this digital platform, such as the creation self-curated playlists for the subscribers etc, bringing them closer to the artistic vision of Tidal and its assigned artists.
For further reading about the journey of Major Key through #StartupLab:
What Is Innovation In Our Modern World?
Betty Tsakarestou | Eva Papantonaki | Kallioph Fragou | Eleutheria Bakomitrou | Sofia Papamixali
