J
Justin Herrick
Guest
If you’ve been anywhere close to Twitter over the last few days, you know all attention has been on Kanye West and his new album. The album, The Life of Pablo, became available through music streaming service Tidal on Sunday, which unsurprisingly angered those who prefer to get their music legally. Tidal is subscription-based, meaning Kanye’s fans and anyone else wanting to listen to the album would be forced to sign up for the service owned by Jay Z.
Kanye originally elected to go the traditional route and, at least for a few hours, made The Life of Pablo available to purchase online. The album was pulled and resurfaced online once again, but this time The Life of Pablo was only on Tidal. A massive amount of people were treated to awful news on Twitter when Kanye on a typical tweeting tirade. The award-winning recording artist is not going to be offering his latest album on any store or service outside of Tidal.
My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016
Although the album soared to the top of Apple’s App Store (in the United States) on Sunday, people on the Android side of things weren’t very pleased to even try Tidal. The app remains outside of the top one hundred free apps on Google Play. People with iOS devices are jumping on Tidal’s free 30-day trial before dumping off the service for Spotify, Apple Music, and another sensible music streaming service.
The biggest problem with Tidal, which is backed by various big names in music, is its lack of differentiation. The base premium subscription is bested or matched by most of the competition, and the HiFi subscription that includes high fidelity, lossless audio is way too expensive for something no one cares about. Oh, Tidal has other exclusive benefits for subscribers? No thanks. I’ll just check my favorite artists’ Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Not even Kanye West can save Tidal. And that’s the hard truth Jay Z has to face. Tidal had 700,000 subscribers when the mogul bought it in March 2015, and, as of October, it just eclipsed 1 million subscribers. It’s going to take a lot more than one Kanye West album to bring the masses away from Spotify and into Tidal.
Via: The Verge
Come comment on this article: Kanye West’s new album is a Tidal exclusive, but that won’t save it
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