Jay-Z was feeling extremely impoverished lately. Turns out he wasn’t the only one.
The music industry’s biggest celebrities gathered and united against one giant that’s, without question, powerless in their hands— Spotify, the world’s current favorite online music streaming app.
In a star-studded event held Monday, the music industry’s biggest names including Beyonce, Madonna, Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, Usher, and (unsurprisingly) Kanye West, vowed to kill Spotify by rallying support for Tidal, the soon-to-be-launched music streaming app that works exactly like Spotify— except that it’s more expensive, and doesn’t give its users the courtesy of a free service.
Tidal, a brainchild of rap superstar Jay-Z, aims to address the woes of the music industry’s greedy artists by charging up to $20 per month for premium online music streaming service.
Spotify has made an enemy out of some of the music industry’s biggest names by being stubbornly unwilling to give the artists what they believe is due them— a huge portion of the app’s earnings.
Just last year, Taylor Swift took a swing against the current leading online music streaming app by imposing a ban on Spotify, after claiming that the company behind the app does not pay the appropriate value for her ‘art’.
Spotify tried to clear its name by explaining that 70% of the company’s revenues go straight to the record labels— which last year alone was expected to have reached $1 billion.
But of course, some artists felt like they were not being given what they believe was due them.
Spotify allows its users to listen to the artists’ music for free even without having to subscribe to the app’s premium service— where ads are placed instead.
Jay-Z and like-minded artists apparently felt that the bans imposed on Spotify were not enough to serve as justice to their make-believe injustices, so they took the fight to a whole new level— using Tidal.
Tidal is designed to eat Spotify alive with its superb streaming speed at 1,411 kilobytes per second— more than a thousand kilobytes ahead of Spotify premium users’ 320 kb, and its even lower speeds for its free users.
Speaking at the Tidal event Monday, Alicia Keys told:
“So we come together before you on this day, March 30th, 2015, with one voice in unity in the hopes that today will be another one of those moments in time, a moment that will forever change the course of music history.
“For today we announce of Tidal, the first ever artist-owned, global music and entertainment platform.”
But as the music industry’s biggest artists walk in unison— so do their fans, in disagreement.
Here are some of what they have to say, via the Daily Mail:
Photo via The Daily Mail
I’m currently a free member of Spotify, and I will vouch that I will never switch to Tidal, ever. These music artists are already multimillionaires, and have no reason to charge even more for a service that is already paying them about 70% directly. I’m not willing to get a faster streaming service at the cost of losing my dignity and a whopping $20 per month! I can understand why some artists, like Taylor Swift, might become angry at these free music streaming services, but the ads we listen to occasionally more than pay for the cost of distributing the music to listeners, which she and other music artists just don’t seem to understand. Even Tidal’s introduction sounds over-hyped up and publicized by the big commercial companies. No thanks, I think I’ll stick with my slow, ad-filled, but fair Spotify. Beyonce and Kanye can keep their runny Tidals.