Later today, Jay Z, the rapper and entrepreneur mogul, will relaunch Tidal, the music streaming service he acquired earlier this year. The Tidal website is counting down to the event.
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Tidal is by no means a new player in music streaming but with Jay Z as the owner, the company has definitely experiencing a rebirth. Earlier this year, Jay Z bought Aspiro, a Swedish technology company that ran two streaming music services, WiMP and Tidal, for US$56-million. Very few people might have heard of Tidal before the purchase but Jay Z is an important figure, not only in music but in general and he has many friends who yield the same influence.
In 2013, Jay Z was named as one of the Time’s 100 most influential people in the world. Time described him as “an artist-entrepreneur who stands at the center of culture and commerce in 21st century America, and his influence stretches across races, religions and regions.”
This influence is exactly what Jay Z has been using to garner hype for the upcoming Tidal launch. For most of today, high-profile celebrities with combined millions of followers have been tweeting messages to promote the launch of Tidal. Even with the promotion that has been going for the event, the details still remain sketchy.
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Amongst the possibilities of announcement to be made later are the first big name artist that will stream music exclusively on the Tidal platform. The rumour is that Tidal would get first releases of tracks from these big name artists before the new tracks make it to Spotify and Deezer.
Some of the artist that have sent tweets, using the #TIDALFORALL hashtag, to ask everyone to turn their profile pictures to turquoise blue, colours of tidal, include Madonna, Kanye West, Coldplay, Deadmau5, Beyonce, Arcade Fire, Calvin Harris, Usher Raymond, Rihanna, Taylor Swift and others.
"The Tides They Are-A Changing" #TIDALforALL
— Mr. Carter (@S_C_) March 30, 2015
Change your avi in support of what is fair, of what is the future. The tides have changed, Barbz.… https://t.co/UqGLHerO37
— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) March 30, 2015
Music makes the people come together. Join Madonna and turn your profile picture blue. Do it for the music. #TIDALforALL
— Madonna (@Madonna) March 30, 2015
It's time to turn the tide and make music history. Show you are part of the movement by turning your profile pic blue. #TIDALforALL
— Usher Raymond IV (@Usher) March 30, 2015
From this, with all of these artist and influencers supporting Tidal, it would appear that Spotify is about to get serious competition. Spotify said it had about 15 million paying subscribers in January of this year and Tidal only has 35,000 paying subscribers. Tidal has a lot of ground to cover but from the names of backers it has, it looks like it will cover the ground between it and Spotify by taking giant steps and not small ones.
cover image: NRK P3
