Jay-Z is not a businessman; he’s a business, man. And his newest business is the already-saturated music streaming service market. His most recent and highly publicized venture is Tidal, a streaming service designed to provide CD quality sound and put recording artists back in control of their content — which really means that artists will make more money.
Tidal went live back in April and made more of a splatting noise than the splash that Jay-Z and his merry band of super rich music celebs thought it would make. Criticism of the obnoxious marketing campaign that led up to its release (I swear you can’t put Madonna’s face on anything without pissing people off), its seemingly high price tag and Kanye West’s sudden departure from its endorsement had everybody’s favorite hustler-turned-mogul looking pretty exposed. However, a lot of the negative sentiment toward Tidal has almost been encouraged by media outlets.
For consumers, it’s usually smart not to listen to the media and try things out for ourselves. Thankfully, Tidal offers a 30-day free trial of its Hi-Fi compatible version, which gave me the opportunity to try it out for myself and decide whether or not I was going to jump on the bandwagon of making fun of my favorite childhood rapper.
Naturally, what I was looking for when going into trying Tidal was whether or not it had anything that separated it from Spotify, Google Music, etc. As far as looking for my favorite well-known artists, Tidal had everything I wanted, and the lossless Hi-Fi tier made my Sonos system kick the way it was supposed to.
Tidal definitely delivers with its CD quality sound, but as far as the collections of less-known artists’ work, there are gaps of missing material. This seemed counterproductive to me because if Tidal’s aim is to attract audiophiles, then it should have complete libraries of the obscure artists that audiophiles usually listen to. This problem is fixable though, and the sound alone makes switching services a consideration for me.
Navigating Tidal is pretty easy if you’ve used Spotify. It has the same sharing, offline and playlist functions, so you’ll feel right at home. Tidal is also curated by music journalists, so the recommendations given to help users discover new music aren’t just chart based like Spotify’s. What you get are recommendations from proven tastemakers, not the listening habits of 15-year-olds across the country.
When Tidal launched, the biggest issue with consumers, myself included, was price. The basic tier costs the same as Spotify Premium at $9.99 per month, and the Hi-Fi tier costs $19.99. One might say: “Well, I’ll just take the free version with annoying commercials and such.” Wrong. Jay-Z isn’t letting any freeloaders ride the Tidal wave.
This seems pretty counterproductive, given the fact that only 25 percent of Spotify’s 60 million users are premium. If you own hi-fi sound equipment, another $240 a year probably isn’t going to bother you, since that’s probably a quarter of what you spent on your home set-up anyway. But if 45 million people don’t care to even spend $10 on a glossy streaming service, it seems unlikely that they’ll cough up $20 for CD-quality sound.
Here’s the kicker though. If you are one of the few people willing to pay for streaming services, and you happen to be a full-time college student, you can get Tidal for 50 percent off. This means that the basic tier is $4.99 (right on par with Spotify), and $9.99 for the hi-fi tier. Tidal also offers exclusive concert tickets to Tidal-sponsored shows and a two-for-one discount for the Made in America Festival. Recently, Jay-Z held a concert exclusive to Tidal users where he only performed his B-Sides tracks and reunited the Roc La Familia of old. So if you like going to cool shows and music festivals and are enrolled full time at a college, $5 or $10 a month probably isn’t that bad. However, if you just stream music for the sake of streaming music, there probably isn’t any reason to waste your money on Tidal.
Personally, I made the switch, which was solely due to the fact that Tidal started offering the student discount, and the hi-fi tier makes a big difference on my home set up. If it wasn’t for the discount, I probably would have stuck to Spotify. There’s just something about $20 a month for a streaming service that doesn’t sit right … especially when some of it is going to Madonna.