Tidal Waves of Disappointment

An interesting month for Tidal, as the platform marks a one-year anniversary by revealing that it now has 3 million users across 46 countries. In addition, its owner Jay Z is reportedly preparing to sue its original owners for allegedly misleading him about the platform’s performance and reach.

A statement said: “We are excited that one year after Tidal launched, we have surpassed 3 million subscribers globally. The growth in our subscriber numbers has been even more phenomenal than we’ve previously shared”.

It continued: “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. As a result, we have now served legal notice to parties involved in the sale”.

Tidal is also now claiming that it offers almost 40 million songs and 130,000 videos to its users, in addition to exclusives and live steams. In fact, video is a surprisingly large part of Tidal’s operations, with 44 global events and concerts live streamed to users in its first year, including a Catholic gathering in Philadelphia attended by Pope Francis.

Prince and The Dead Weather are amongst high profile artists who have recently joined the likes of Beyonce and Kanye West in premiering and ‘windowing’ their releases on the service. That said, ‘The Life of Pablo’ is now in the wild on a variety of other streaming services and will continue to be tweaked as “a living, breathing changing creative expression”, much like the man himself.

In related news, Apple scored a further point in the streaming division wars when Taylor Swift appeared in a new advert for its Apple Music service, promoting some commentators to declare that streaming music was having a terrible week unless you were Apple.