Tidal to close down – a lot of labels still waiting reporting (and money!)
According to the Norwegian outlet Dagens Næringsliv, Tidal (a subscription-based music streaming service of lossless audio) is close to shutting down as it has just enough money left “to last another six months”. The news doesn’t come as a surprise, the start-up has been going from bad to worse since it started.
The company, fronted by rapper Jay Z, gathered a staggering $44 million in losses in 2016 and has had trouble getting traction from day one, although they keep on claiming they are doing well. ‘Well’ is subjective, the service only has 1.2 million subscribers (and not 3 million as Jay Z always claimed).
And there’s more. The claims that it pays the highest percentage of royalties to music artists and songwriters within the music streaming market can be taken with a big grain of salt as it has a very bad track record when it comes to reporting sales, let alone pay, especially to indie labels. But not only indie labels, Kayne West for instance terminated his contract with Tidal, claiming that the service owed him $3 million.
Support Side-Line
More people read Side-Line than ever, and there is still no paywall and no advertising. Readers pay for it instead - from $5 a month.
Why we ask
Advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news organisations we have not put up a paywall, and we refuse to add annoying advertising, so we need to ask for your help. Side-Line’s independent journalism takes time, money and hard work to produce, and we do it to push the artists we like, who are equally fighting to survive.
Handled by PayPal.
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
