TIDAL, which is currently owned by the famous rapper, songwriter, and producer Jay-Z, is subscription-based music and video streaming service that combines lossless audio and high definition music videos. It also comes with exclusive content and has unique features on music. It was launched on October 28, 2015. It has been showcased on the following platforms: Microsoft Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android. It is available in 54 countries. Its website is “www.tidal.com.”
Inception
The tidal brand was first launched on October 28, 2014, in the UK, the US, and Canada, which was later available in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Poland by its developer Aspiro, which was earlier a branch of WiMP. In January 2015, Project Panther Bidco Ltd., which is owned by the rapper Jay-Z, purchased Aspiro for $56.2 million. Jay-Z bought this brand as he wanted to carry out his vision to other streaming services.
In March 2015, Jay-Z relaunched the service but now with a mass marketing campaign where many music artists posted the phrase “#TIDALforAll” and also changed their profile photo to blue in all their social platform. The owners of Tidal, Jay-Z, and 15 other musicians held a press conference, which was promoted as being the first streaming service owned by an artist.
Evolution
Tidal was soon used by many people as a streaming service and was very successful. Tidal was very successful in giving people access to more than 60 million tracks and 240,000 music videos and also was successful in offering two levels of services: Tidal premium, which gave lossy quality audio or video, and Tidal HiFi, which gave lossless CD-quality audio or video. Within the music streaming market, it paid the highest amount of money to music artists and songwriters.
There were rumors that tidal closed down its original Aspiro offices in Stockholm on April 16, 2015, which led to unemployment of all the Swedish employees and the current CEO Andy Chen. Tidal, however, denied these rumors but stated that Peter Tonstad replaced Andy Chen. Shortly after they started to sell digital downloads and CDs, Tidal appointed Jeff Twig as the CEO in December 2015, who later left the company in March 2017. In August 2017, Richard Sanders was the new CEO.
In January 2017, the company decided to deliver master quality recordings with the highest possible resolution to its HiFi subscribers by partnering up with Master Quality Authenticated, a British company. This did it the only streaming service to offer this service. Sprint, a US mobile carrier, bought a 33 percent stake in Tidal and offered Exclusive content to Sprint customers on January 23, 2017. Mercedes-Benz’s web portal is also one of the partners of Tidal since September 2017.
Although Tidal was a fast-growing streaming service, it had some controversies with its name. In January 2017, a Norwegian newspaper reported that Tidal was claiming higher subscriber counts than usual. They claimed that 3 million people subscribed to the service, but the truth was that only 350,000 users were subscribed in September 2015 and 850,000 subscribers in March 2016. It also stated that Tidal intentionally falsified the streaming numbers for Beyonce’s Lemonade and Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo albums and also accused them of paying a high amount of money to the artist’s record labels.
Awards & Achievements
Since it’s inception, it has gained much praise from various critics and the public. Glenn Peoples of Billboard said that Tidal is a great thing to happen for the music industry. He said that the streaming market needed a “kick in the butt” and Tidal was successful in doing so.
He also stated that Tidal, in addition to being a very successful streaming service, it also paid a considerable amount of money to the artists. It also got some criticism from USA Today, saying that it was a foolish app, and it overestimated the average listener. But, Jay-Z responded to this criticism saying that Tidal is subjected to hypocritical criticism.
Net Worth of Tidal in 2024
As of November 2024, The net worth of Tidal is $650 million, after Sprint bought it for $200 million.
Tidal is one of the most successful streaming service owned by Jay-Z. It has offered many services to its subscribers, which made it more widespread. It has also partnered with many famous brands. Critics and the public have praised it. It is available in 54 countries and on many platforms like Microsoft Windows, OS X, iOS, Android. It has been in many controversies, but it didn’t harm its success. Tidal doesn’t seem to lose its popularity any time soon.