10 Things You Don’t Know About Jay Z’s New Music Steaming Service ‘Tidal’

We saw it’s star-studded launch event last month. The most interesting launch of the new music streaming service Tidal’ as Jay Z, Beyonce and other leading acts made a vow to bring fans music from top stars that they can’t get anywhere but his uber-hyped, new streaming service. Although it’s future is still questioned, take a look at the following 10 facts you need to know about the streaming music service.

1. Tidal is a music streaming service that originally started in Scandinavia in 2009. It was called WiMP then.

2. In October 2014 Aspiro rebranded WiMP as Tidal for its UK and US launch.  A company controlled by Jay Z then bought it for R661 687,600 last month .

3. Tidal is a rival to Spotify, video site YouTube and Apple, which are established music streaming services.

4. Tidal is under new ownership, and those owners are musicians. Not just Jay Z.

5. The names of the co- owners of ‘Tidal’ are Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Coldplay, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J Cole, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Usher.

6.  Tidal’s aims at restoring the value of music in the eyes (or ears) of listeners, which means making them pay for it, rather than listening for free, as they can on the advertising-supported tiers of rivals Spotify and Deezer.

7. One of Tidal’s key tactics for standing out from the streaming crowd will be exclusives: the promise that you will be able to hear some music on Tidal before it is available anywhere else.

8. The main gripe about Tidal under Jay Z is that it is a bunch of rich artists trying to get richer. But one of the strongest arguments in favour of its starry ownership is that they may have the clout to make music royalties more transparent for all artists.

9. The launch of Tidal comes as the industry moves away from a digital download model to subscription-based music streaming.

10. Tidal aims to pay back 75% of its revenues  to the music industry.