Shawn Corey Carter,better known as Jay-Z, not only is one of the biggest names in Hip-Hop and entertainment, he is one of the top moguls and businessmen in the genre and dare i say in music overall. His net worth(not including his wife Beyonce) is at $810 Million according to Forbes who yearly does a ranking for the 10 richest hip-hop acts. Jay-Z was #2 on last years list trailing P. Diddy by $10 Million. To see his growth from a recording artist to a business man has been nothing short of black excellence. His influence continues to be felt as entertainers like Drake and LeBron James follow in his footsteps. Jay-Z business ventures span from having his own signature shoe with Reebok to having his own cigars to now having his own music streaming service called Tidal. Tidal has been in operation since October of 2014 after Jay-Z acquired Aspiro, the Norwegian media technology company for $56 million. As of late Tidal has been in the middle of some tumultuous situations. Here are 3 reasons why Tidal could become Jay-Z’s biggest loss if not fixed.
Lawsuits. Ever since acquiring the streaming and service and making it public there has been lawsuits out the gate. A Kanye West fan is suing both him and the music streaming service over his 2016 album The Life of Pablo. Kanye Tweeted “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale … You can only get it on Tidal.” Six Weeks later TLOP is on Apple Music. One could possibly see this as consumer fraud.
Easy Accessibility. When Uncle Snoop speaks up, you know there has to be something to it. Jay-Z & Beyonce joint collab album was an exclusive for Tidal(only for 48 hours then released on Spotify and Apple). Snoop Dogg and other consumers had issues downloading their album. Even Nas had trouble uploading his own project onto Tidal. This led Snoop Dogg to say this via live video on Twitter. “I wanna say Tidal’s full of shit, They’ve got a lot of bullshit going on. N****s don’t know how to get to it, get to the music. You see Nas had problems uploading his own motherfucking music. Now Jay-Z, you know I love you, but all this futuristic, sci-fi thinking, next-level shit? Knock it off man, make this shit easy, man. Now I don’t even know how to get yours and Beyoncé’s album. Can y’all just use iTunes, SoundCloud or Amazon, regular shit? I know y’all are trying to get a lot of money, but y’all fucking a lot of people up with this. Some n****s is dumb and don’t know how to upload or download. Tidal: y’all need instructions. Thank you”. If that is not a sign for Tidal to tighten up, I don’t know what is.
Exclusives??? Tidal as a subscription service has tried to offer exclusives. Beyonce’s Lemonade & Kanye’s The Life of Pablo were released exclusively on Tidal. While Lemonade is still exclusively on Tidal, TLOP is now available on iTunes. This has lead to a pending lawsuit by a Kanye West fan. More recently, Jay-Z & Beyonce dropped their joint collab album Everything Is Love. Excited over their collab album everyone went to Tidal. 48 hrs later, its was on Apple Music & Spotify. If you are already a subscriber to one of these platforms, Going to Tidal and signing up just for one project had to have been disheartening and to be honest a waste of time.
With all that’s been said, there are those who still believe in Tidal. Or is it Jay-Z they believe in? Either way, Tidal has some fine tuning to do. Let’s hope that Hov doesn’t face an L with this venture.
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