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Beyonce's music may soon not be available on her own streaming service Tidal, following a falling out with Sony Music.
Alongside Jay Z, Beyonce is one of the principal owners of Tidal but she has run into a series of difficulties with her current label Sony. The record company, who own licensing rights to Beyoncé’s music, is demanding a large cash advance to permit her tracks to be played on the service.
As Bloomberg reports (with the memorable headline "Why Jay Z's Tidal is a complete disaster") Sony have threatened to pull her catalogue unless a compromise is struck.
The key issue appears to be who controls an artist's rights. Despite the apparently impressive press conference of megastars ranging from Daft Punk to Jack White held earlier this year, it appears the artists didn't read the small print. “I’m pretty sure most of the artists that were at the press conference don’t control their own streaming rights,” said Peter Mensch, co-founder of Q Prime, told Bloomberg.
Tidal have already managed to broker deals with Universal and Warner. Recently Tidal had to deny rumours that they will release a long-awaited Beyonce and Jay Z album exclusively on this service.
Beyonce and Nicki Minaj recently released 'Feeling Myself' as a Tidal exclusive but within minutes it was being streamed illegally. The video has now been uploaded onto Vevo.
Below: Watch Nicki Minaj Feeling Myself (featuring Beyonce)
This latest headline is the latest in a series of frustrations for Tidal. A number of artists have spoken out about their concerns for the streaming company. Jim James from My Morning Jacket described it as "elitst and weird" He said "The advertising turned me off. Twenty bucks a month obviously isn’t a lot of money for all the music in the world, but if you can’t afford health insurance, are you really going to pay for hi-res files of music you can get for free on YouTube, even if they sound like shit?"
James' comments come in the wake of Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard's damning comments on the service in an interview with The Daily Beast. “If I had been Jay Z, I would have brought out ten artists that were underground or independent and said, ‘These are the people who are struggling to make a living in today’s music industry. Whereas this competitor streaming site pays this person 15 cents for X amount of streams, that same amount of streams on my site, on Tidal, will pay that artist this much,’” Gibbard shared. “I think they totally blew it by bringing out a bunch of millionaires and billionaires and propping them up onstage and then having them all complain about not being paid.”
Tidal reports that 900,000 are currently subscribed to the service.
