Tidal has let 10% of their staff go.
Last month, it was reported that Jack Dorsey’s company Block was planning sweeping layoffs. In addition to Square and Cash App, Block is the umbrella company that owns Tidal, and now the streaming service has been impacted by those layoffs, Bloomberg News reports. Approximately 40 staffers across multiple departments, or 10% of the staff, were reportedly laid off.
TIDAL now offers three membership options for you to choose from: TIDAL Free, TIDAL HiFi, and TIDAL HiFi Plus. With access to the same catalog of over 80 million songs, each membership has its own set of perks to empower your music experience.
And, one of the more interesting portions:
Not only does TIDAL HiFi Plus offer access to innovative listening experiences, but through the Direct Artist Payout program, it also allocates up to 10% of your monthly subscription towards your most-streamed artist. This means that your top-streamed artist of the month can benefit immediately and directly from the success of their work on TIDAL
Square, the mobile payments firm run by Jack Dorsey, has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Jay-Z’s music streaming service Tidal for $297 million, the companies announced Thursday.
Through the deal, Jay-Z and Tidal’s other artist shareholders — including Beyoncé, Madonna and Rihanna — will continue to own their piece of the business, which will operate as an independent division within Square.
David Turner, writing at Gizmodo:
Tidal’s subscriber numbers received such intensified attention because initial adoption of the service appeared to be slow and the company ceased providing any user base information, while its competition continued to show growth. An extensive 2017 Dagens Naeringsliv report alleged that Tidal’s subscriber numbers were inflated. The paper said according to multiple sources and documents that Tidal’s true subscriber base in September 2015 was closer 350,000—Jay-Z tweeted it was 1,000,000—and in March 2016 was 850,000—although Tidal said 3,000,000.
I just don’t see how Tidal finds a place in this market. If you want a streaming service, you’re using Spotify or Apple Music, if you want random songs or videos, you’re using YouTube. I don’t see any place for Tidal to grab a foothold.
Amy X. Wang, writing at Rolling Stone:
As the list of fraud accusations against Jay-Z’s Tidal lengthens, the music-streaming service is countering with its own investigation – not into the accuracy of its data, but into how that data had been potentially breached. […] In a statement provided to Rolling Stone on Friday, Tidal CEO Richard Sanders emphatically rejected DN’s claims – but, in what may appear a bit of a contradiction, said the company is asking an “independent, third party cyber-security firm” to review a potential data breach.
Shirley Halperin, writing for Variety:
Former Kobalt Music Group president Richard Sanders is the new CEO of Tidal, the Jay-Z-owned music streaming service launched in 2015, sources confirm to Variety.
He is the fourth person to take the CEO title at Tidal in just over two years.
TMZ is reporting that Kanye West has ended his relationship with the music service Tidal:
Our sources say a month ago Kanye’s lawyer sent a letter to Tidal, saying the company was in breach and the contract was terminated. Over the next 2 weeks lawyers for both sides tried to resolve the conflict but failed. We’re told 2 weeks ago Kanye’s lawyer fired off a second letter declaring again the contract was over.
Micah Singleton, writing at The Verge:
According to a lengthy report from the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv, Tidal has been inflating its subscriber totals to the public since the company was acquired by Jay Z two years ago. Dagens Næringsliv says it obtained internal reports from the streaming service that show Tidal only had 350,000 subscribers in September 2015, the same month when Jay Z tweeted that Tidal had reached 1 million users.
They probably should’t worry about this too much since Sean Spicer will go on TV and defend whatever numbers our President makes up — alternative facts in streaming subscribers are probably just fine.
Sprint has purchased a 33% stake in Tidal:
Sprint has acquired a 33 percent stake in Jay Z’s streaming service Tidal, the two companies announced today (Jan. 23). A source familiar with the matter tells Billboard that the purchase was for $200 million and that Jay and each of the company’s two dozen artist-owners will remain part owners.
It seems like a big reason Tidal was created was to eventually sell itself.
Jimmy Iovine, head of of Apple Music, told Buzzfeed that the company is not interested in buying Tidal.
“We’re really running our own race,” Jimmy Iovine, who heads Apple Music, told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “We’re not looking to acquire any streaming services.”
In the year rap mogul Jay Z took control of Tidal, the music-streaming service more than doubled its losses, burning cash at a rapid rate and testing the depth of its owner’s pockets.
Aspiro AB, the Swedish holding company that Jay Z and a group of other musicians bought in early 2015, recorded a net loss of 239 million Swedish kronor ($28 million) last year, according to a legal filing. That compared with a net loss of 88.9 million Swedish kronor in 2014.
I don’t think that’s good.
Daisuke Wakabayashi, Hannah Karp, and Patience Haggin, writing for the Wall Street Journal on how Apple is apparently looking into buying Tidal:
The talks are ongoing and may not result in a deal, these people said. Apple is exploring the idea of bringing on Tidal to bolster its Apple Music service because of Tidal’s strong ties to popular artists such as Kanye West and Madonna.
I’m not sure if this makes much sense, but Nick Heer nails what has to be the thinking:
One of the ways they differentiate themselves is to swoon artists enough for them to make their newest releases exclusive to a platform for a short amount of time before it’s generally released. A bunch of these exclusives over the past year went to Apple Music, but those they didn’t get — the newest albums from Kanye West, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and other high-profile artists — all went to Tidal. If Apple were to maintain those relationships post-acquisition and keep the ones they have, they’d have the exclusive release market effectively cornered.
A man in San Fransciso is suing Kanye West and TIDAL for fraudulently claiming that the artist’s new album, The Life of Pablo, would be available exclusively on the service.
“We fully support the right of artists to express themselves freely and creatively, however creative freedom is not a license to mislead the public,” Baker-Rhett’s attorney Jay Edelson wrote in a statement. “We believe that we will be able to prove to a jury that Mr. West and Tidal tricked millions of people into subscribing to their services and that they will ultimately be held accountable for what they did.”
Adam Ewing, writing for Bloomberg, reports on TIDAL’s claim that the previous owners of the service inflated the subscriber numbers.
“It became clear after taking control of Tidal and conducting our own audit that the total number of subscribers was actually well below the 540,000 reported to us by the prior owners,” Tidal said in an e-mailed statement. “As a result, we have now served legal notice to parties involved in the sale.”