It was like Live Aid, or maybe USA for Africa. A gathering of the great and good, fighting for the oppressed, the needy. Not a new charity single, no, but rather the biggest names in music uniting in support of, er, the biggest names in music.
In case you missed the soft focus video, Jay Z, along with a few pals, has launched Tidal, a music streaming system intended to rival Spotify and take on iTunes, YouTube and The Man – the new service will, unlike its competitors, be run by artists, for artists.
The thing is, music sales have been in decline for years, and the current generation of youngsters regard music as something that’s free – despite, as Jay Z points out, happily paying “$6 for a bottle of water”. Tidal is backed by $100 billion of talent including Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris and many more. And while Spotify juggernauts on, presumably ‘exclusives’ from these acts may tip the balance in the favour of the new upstart.
If Tidal supports artists, is Spotify on the side of the consumer? It’s free to join (albeit with ads), and a tenner a month for an unlimited experience. Tidal’s selling point is CD-quality sound, but there are a few problems with this. Higher quality means you may get delays in your listening if your broadband is poor. And if you listen to music through your iPod headphones or worse still, your PC speakers, then nothing is going to sound great. Maybe you need Neil Young’s ultra-high quality Pono Player, or the new $1200 Sony Walkman. Though if you’re into 1930s blues, or punk albums made on a 4-track tape machine then Tidal may not be for you.
So what do you get for your £20 a month, apart from 25 million tracks (pretty much the same as Spotify, minus Taylor Swift). Some satisfaction that Jay Z and missus Beyoncé won’t go hungry? To be fair, while the video came across as self-important and the launch opulent, the Tidal people spoke some sense, pointing to Aloe Blacc’s ‘I Need A Dollar’ garnering $4,000 in royalties from 168 MILLION plays.
Another salient point from Jay Z: “Nobody’s ever said, ‘Oh, the rich getting richer! I won’t buy an iPhone!’”
Tidal have also committed to paying twice the royalties, but even double Spotify’s rate is literally pennies, and thanks to the complexities of contracts won’t just go into the pockets of the artists anyway. Of the half a million Tidal users only 17,000 are paying, while Spotify has managed to sell a quarter of its 60 million subscribers a paid subscription, claiming that many of these originally used the free version.
Meanwhile, Apple are set to relaunch the Beats Music streaming service globally, having recruited Radio One’s Zane Lowe as a ‘tastemaker’ (hmm). And YouTube will soon launch Music Key, with a similar setup to Spotify.
With all this big business involved, will the artists get more money? Well, we can be pretty sure some of them will…
SACRED PAWS
Six Songs
(Rock Action)
It’s not often that something new and fresh-sounding comes along, but, for anyone unfamiliar with African music, this Glasgow/London duo could be it. Chiming guitar lines interweave, underpinning vocals that hark back to UK new wave and post-punk, but it’s the tribal drum rhythms that drive this mini-album along. ‘Vince’ is the irresistibly foot-tapping tune that has been all over BBC 6Music, while ‘Ice Pop’ is a more woozy affair. It should be said that all the tunes are short and sweet and the beat is relentless, so quite how the band will progress to a couple of full-length releases is unclear. But for now, just enjoy six slices of eclectic pop that could be the soundtrack to your summer. HHHH
(You’ll note that the page layouts for these all look strangely similar – this templated design means I can spend more time on hand-crafting the words which after all are THE IMPORTANT BIT, if my bosses are listening). But hopefully they’ll appreciate the clever wee use of an iPad there. The Donegal Democrat clearly did… can’t speak for their readers, mind…)
