Jay Z did more than most to avoid becoming part of the Spotify machine, but on his 50th birthday, HOV has finally given in.
Ask anyone to list the best rappers of all-time, and most will place Jay Z somewhere in the top 5. From “Hard Knock Life” to “Tom Ford” and countless songs in between, few artists have been as prolific or successful as Jay Z in the history of popular music. His catalog is vast, but until very recently (December 4), fans could only access most of his material through Tidal, the premium streaming service Jay – who also owns the platform – helped bring to the masses in 2015 and Apple Music.
Fans will recall Jay Z’s catalog being on Spotify once before. In April 2017, Hov’s music disappeared from the streaming service “at the request of the artist,” according to an official statement. Reasons for the return are not clear at this time, but you don’t need to be a financial analyst to understand the potential for additional income.
Jay Z’s reasons for starting Tidal were admirable. At the dawn of Spotify, Jay Z recognized that most of the investors behind the supposed ‘future of music consumption’ were people who had no direct involvement in music. The backers for the Spotify and Deezer and other streaming services were only interested in the money that could be made and not in the art they would use to make money. Tidal, which was initially backed by several significant artists, hoped to bring an artist-approved platform to the masses.
Tidal is still in existence today, but its userbase trails Spotify and Apple Music by a wide margin. Jay Z’s decision to upload his catalog to Spotify in honor of his 50th birthday is more of a smart business move than an act of secession. Jay Z recognizes that “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ is as relevant today as ever, and he understands the money to be made from adding his music to the world’s most popular platform for audio consumption.
Furthermore, I would wager Jay Z believes his biggest hits is different than the material marked as ‘popular’ by Spotify before uploading his full catalog. Check it out:
Jay Z’s most popular Spotify songs as of 10AM EST on December 4, 2019
But what does this mean for Tidal? In the short term, probably nothing. Tidal’s chances of becoming the preferred method of music consumption by the world at large were always slim, and I don’t foresee Jay’s decision to join Spotify as something that will ultimately hurt the company. Tidal still has exclusive access to high-fidelity streams of Jay’s material, as well as event streaming capabilities that competing platforms have yet to offer.
It’s likely Jay’s decision is tied to an exclusive engagement contract he had with Tidal. His spouse and pop queen, Beyonce, ended a three-year exclusive streaming deal with Tidal for her album Lemonade in April of this year.
Until Jay Z comments on the change, feel free to revisit his essential tracks via the Spotify playlist below:
TIDAL is the first streaming platform to make developing young talent one of its primary concerns.
Spotify and Apple Music are the first names most think of when asked about streaming services, but TIDAL is not far behind. Jay-Z’s music streaming service boasts 4.2 million subscribers worldwide, and as of this week, the platform has become the first in its field to make a focused effort to discover and develop promising young talent.
Tidal Unplugged is a new, $1 million endowment program made possible by philanthropists Mark Lampart and Robert Nelsen, two of venture capitalists associated with the platform. Kicking it off in Detroit, the promotion aims to give artists the means and resources to pursue their passion. A brief explanation on the Tidal Unplugged landing page reads:
All local artists are welcome to submit an acoustic performance to be eligible for the program. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity allows aspiring musicians to dedicate more time and energy to seeking a career as an artist.
Artist Incentives:
– Artist incentives – Creative budget – Monthly stipend – Access to recording & creative resources – Industry mentoring – Promotional support via TIDAL Rising – Opportunity to perform in a TIDAL Unplugged showcase
At the end of the program, finalists will develop and finish four songs for distribution. Once complete, the tracks will debut on TIDAL. Artists will also maintain 100% ownership of their works.
TIDAL hopes to expand the program in other markets.
Sbumissions for TIDAL Unplugged begin on March 1. For additional information, please contact unplugged@tidal.com.
Tidal recently hit its one-year anniversary, and to celebrate the streaming service unloaded a ton of data this week related to its growth and success over the last twelve months. The company says it now has 3 million paid users, up from just over 500,000 at launch, but it did not reveal any information regarding how many free trials had been used during the same period. The number of total subscribers is still far below the 11 million who use Apple Music, not to mention the alleged 30 million users claimed by Spotify, but it’s growth nonetheless.
The far more interesting factoid from this data dump, and the reason for this post, revolves around the claim that Kanye West’s new album, The Life Of Pablo, received more than 250 million streams in its first 10 days of release. That is an impressive number when taken at face value, but when given several seconds of contemplation it’s also fairly meaningless. Tidal does not state whether they are referring to full album streams or the cumulative number of streams for each track on the record. They also do not clarify what constitutes a stream. Is it one full song, or is a stream counted even if I change the track a few seconds after another one begins?
Before we try to breakdown just what this number might mean we must first consider how many people had access to the album during its first 10 days of release. Tidal required users to signup for a their service, or at least a free trial, to hear The Life Of Pablo, but since there are no numbers available for trials that were not converted to subscribers we’re going to have to make some assumptions. Let’s say Tidal has a 50% conversion rate on new signups (they don’t), and just for fun we’ll pretend the 2.5 million new subscribers all joined when The Life Of Pablo was released. That means at least 5 million people signed up for a trial of Tidal, which means somewhere around 6 million people had access to the stream. Again, this number is not hard science, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll use it for all the math we do moving forward in this post.
Let’s say 250 million streams referred to complete front-to-back plays of The Life Of Pablo. With a running time right around 60-minutes long (59:41), this means the album was played for the equivalent of 625,000,000 days in the first 240-hours it was online. With an estimate of 6 million users with access, this means every user would have played the record enough to have heard for more than 104 days of their life, and that is assuming every Tidal user was even interested in the record.
Maybe the 250 million streams comes from the cumulative number of individual song streams for every track on the record, which would make the most sense. The average runtime for a song on The Life Of Pablo is 3:12, which puts the estimated cumulative amount of time the album was played in those first 10 days at 13,000,000 hours, or just under one full day per user. This is still a ton of listening hours, but it’s far more reasonable than the number in the previous paragraph.
What is most likely true is that 250 million streams does come from the cumulative number of individual song streams for every track on the record, including partial streams. Like iTunes, it’s likely Tidal counts a song stream after a certain amount of the track has been played (usually around 30-seconds). This would mean tracks off The Life Of Pablo had been started at least 250 million times, which is still impressive, but not that 250 million tracks had been streamed in full.
Speaking from a sales perspective, the industry ratio for streaming is 1,500 streams equals that of one album sold economically. Using 250 million as our base number, this means Kanye moved 166,000 albums in what is essentially his debut week of release. This would mean a 50% drop over West’s previous debut week low of 327,000 units for the 2013 release of Yeezus. 166k is certainly nothing to scoff at, but considering the large disparity between those first week numbers it’s hard not to question if the decision to make The Life Of Pablo a Tidal exclusive, not to mention releasing it without a download for consumers, ultimately hurt Kanye more than the press garnered for the move helped promote his record’s release.
Let’s also not forget that The Life Of Pablo was pirated from torrent sites more than 500,000 times in its first few days of release. That number does not include direct downloads from piracy blogs or downloads from services like Zippyshare, which would likely push the total number well beyond the million mark. The fact the album still hasn’t been made available for purchase or downloads has only continued to encourage piracy, and with each week thousands of additional illegal downloads occur as a result.
Tidal mentioned in their initial data dump that Kanye’s ‘Yeezy Season 3’ fashion show, which doubled as the official premiere for The Life Of Pablo, was watched by 23 million viewers. In theory, Tidal could count this number towards total album plays mentioned in their press release, but if true that would be some exceptional and largely unnecessary number boosting. After all, who is Tidal hoping to please with these numbers outside their core investors? They have shown growth, and with more artist collaborations additional subscribers will come in time, but their biggest exclusive to date has doubled as a commercial low for the artist on the other end of the deal. Maybe this is Tidal trying to show us the glass is half-full when we know it’s half-empty, and if so then I am still unconvinced. Until Tidal can show its platform benefitting musicians in a way neither of its main competitors can match it will remain an overpriced alternative to larger, more recognized brands with superior catalogs.
James Shotwell is the Digital Marketing Manager for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.
Despite what the proliferation of streaming services may have lead you to believe, exclusivity in the music business is alive and well in 2016. Regardless of whether you’re discussing sales, streams, video content, or even written editorials, the demand from companies and blogs alike to lay claim to something no one else can offer has never been higher than it is right now. Even artists are in on the game, with Kanye West proclaiming Tidal as the only place he will ever allow The Life Of Pablo to be made available to the public online, or with Drake having his “Hotline Bling” video financed and premiered by Apple. The idea behind these moves is that it draws everyone’s attention to one place where the conversation is controlled by the party, or parties, responsible for the content being shared. It’s a concept known to many as windowing, and in theory it’s a real game-changer, but in reality it’s a process that ultimately devalues whatever content such activity is intended to promote.
“Windowing” is a term often thought of in relation to film, but in recent years it has become increasingly popular in conversations based around the music industry. The word refers to the idea of releasing a new piece of media in a select number of locations or to a select user set at first before later making the same content available in more places and to more people as it begins to age. In digital music, a windowed release would be one that is only available on Spotify or a similar streaming platform at first. Then, after several weeks or months has passed, the album is made available on Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube, and/or any other streaming platform you can think to name.
Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton recently suggested that in future, we will see music releases being windowed like movies, with new music being made available exclusively on paid subscription services first, and only on free services later. Companies want to offer something their competition cannot, and as that trend continues the amount of money services will be willing to pay for exclusive access will rise. This mean labels and artists alike will be able to cash in on new material with a big payday up front as opposed to pursuing a traditional release and the uncertainty that comes with it. Windowing guarantees some return on investment, at least up front, even if the material isn’t all that great. After all, companies are paying for content, not quality.
The problem with windowing, especially in music, is that it assume consumers will change their behavior based on a corporate sponsorship that does not benefit them in any way whatsoever. Consumers have grown accustomed to having everything ever released available on demand, often for free, pretty much whenever they wish to access it. They have likely already chosen a streaming platform, or have at least used several free trials, and they have established a routine when it comes to new music consumption that they rarely deviate from. If they buy vinyl, a streaming exclusive won’t get them to use Tidal. If they pay for Spotify, a physical release of something might not find its way into their collection. This isn’t to say music fans are stuck in their ways, but they do tend to know how they prefer to engage with music and they rarely change their behavior without somehow finding it absolutely necessary to do so. Promises of better quality might work, which I suppose is the hope of hi-fi services such as Tidal, but the only people who care about such things are those who feel what they already have is not good enough.
Take Kanye’s latest, The Life Of Pablo, for example. The record, which was released exclusively on Tidal, reportedly helped the fledgling streaming platform more than double its total number of subscribers (from 1.5 million to 3 million), but it also lead to a boom in online piracy that quickly outpaced Tidal’s growth. Within 72-hours of the album first appearing online several torrent trackers reported the record to have already been illegally downloaded more than 500,000 times, and by the end of the album’s first week of release that number had already doubled. Kanye may see some return on those downloads in the form of praise from fans received over Twitter or another social network, but the real winners in this scenario are the pirate sites promoting the album’s illegal availability. Their pages have ads, often many, and they gain a few pennies for every click they receive. Times those pennies by a million or more and you begin to see real money, which will never reach Kanye or anyone he may be indebted to as a result of creating TLOP.
The short term gains of windowing releases in music is only a good thing when one does not consider the potential lost income and engagement that will arise from consumers forging their own path to your content. Instead of limiting access to material, artists big and small should be doing everything in their power to make their music available everywhere under the sun. Make it harder for people to find illegal links to your music by supplying them with endless legal options instead. Don’t limit yourself or your fans to just one service when you can use them all and have your content available anywhere on the planet at a moment’s notice. You might not receive a big check overnight, or even have the immediate press blitz you desire, but in the long run you will develop a more dedicated and engaged audience that is willing to put their money where their tweets are and financially support your efforts. That should be the ultimate goal for any artist, and it’s only possible by allowing your fans to be themselves and make their own decisions.
