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One month after a hugely lavish launch in New York, Tidal's app has dropped out of the iPhone's top 700 download chart in the US.
Ever since ther launch - which featured Jay Z, Kanye, Rihanna, Daft Punk and Jack White - the service has been beset by criticism and all of the inherent problems of launching a major music rival in full public view.
As BGR put it beautifully, instead of suggesting it was a way for new artists to have the funds they need to make a living, it tried to make you feel pity for megastars: "The result was the ultimate mixed message: You should feel sorry about how little money Nicki [Minaj] makes."
The app is now being beaten in the charts by Pandora (number seven), Spotify (number 23) and a number of free music download apps. The poor performance may help explain why the company's CEO Peter Tonstad was removed last week. He has now been replaced by a former consultant for the Norwegian Ministry Of The Environment.
Some of users complaints have been genuine (particularly regarding the high cost and the to the wholesale copying of the interface from Spotify) but others can be put down to teething problems. Also fan communities appear to be unconvinced of the merits of the scheme - Rihanna's Navy were not happy with 'American Oxygen' premiering on the service.
In this month’s issue of Paper Magazine, Kanye West discussed Tidal and the response it has been receiving. “I heard a comment -- a joke -- about the Tidal press conference being an Illuminati moment,” he said. “If there was actually an Illuminati, it would be more like the energy companies. Not celebrities that gave their life to music and who are pinpointed as decoys for people who really run the world.”
So far Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard has provided the most damning appraisal at the service. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Gibbard said that things went wrong when Jay Z decided to bring in "a bunch of millionaires and billionaires" to launch the service.
“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.”
He continued: “There was a wonderful opportunity squandered to highlight what this service would mean for artists who are struggling and to make a plea to people’s hearts and pocketbooks to pay a little more for this service that was going to pay these artists a more reasonable streaming rate. And they didn’t do it. That’s why this thing is going to fail miserably.”
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