If Apple plans to offer artist exclusives as a way to encourage sign-ups to its rebranded Beats Music streaming service, it will be facing new competition. TechCrunch reports that Tidal, the high-definition music service being relaunched later today by new owner Jay Z, is set to announce some exclusive deals with big-name artists.
Tidal is […] reportedly making a move to snag new releases by some of the biggest musicians of the moment including Kanye West, Madonna and Daft Punk […]
Tidal’s plan of attack will be to ink first-window deals with the artists, where Tidal would get first releases of tracks from big-name artists ahead of any other digital streaming services.
The artists named in the report have all been using the #tidalforall hashtag in recent tweets and Instagram posts …
Apple has run a number of exclusives on iTunes, from the Beatles to Beyoncé, and it seems likely it would seek to do the same with its streaming service. It has even been suggested that the company could become “the most powerful record label in the world.”
Apple is believed to be set to finally introduce its streaming music service at WWDC in June, possibly as part of iOS 8.4. We’re expecting to see it integrated into the standard iOS Music app, offering an Apple-branded version of the curated playlists, cloud-based libraries, and customized offerings that attracted users to Beats Music. Apple was reportedly hoping to hit a price point of $7.99/month after giving up on more ambitious plans of $5/month, something which now appears unlikely.
It was reported last week that Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor is taking a leading role in the revamp of the Music app after speaking about working with Apple on a “music project” last fall.
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Madonna is one of the biggest musicians of the moment? Did I wake up in 1985
Lol ;)
well it doesn’t say anything about sample rate, bit depth or what compression scheme they will be using. so at this point it is complete ” Me To ” BS!
I’ve been using Tidal for months and the “HiFi” Audio sounds great. Best streaming quality I’ve heard by a long, long way. Jay Z buying Tidal has me worried about the service though…
Yes, because he’s a thug — not a wildly successful multi-millionaire businessman.
I signed up for a trial for Tidal and then when I found out JayZ bought it, I discontinued the service. Lossless does sound better than Lossy, at least when you listen to well mastered recordings that don’t have audio compression and limiting with acoustic instruments. I thought the player app could have been a little better. They did have some bad information that came up after performing some searches, so that could be improved, but I just simply don’t want to give JayZ any of my money. I think Apple totally blew it by not buying Tidal instead of Beats. Beats is just the same thing as Spotify in terms of QoS, but to those that have decent stereos, we want better sound and paying a little more is a small consolation. $20 a month is about the most I’d pay for streaming music, but the sound quality better be great.
The word on the street is that Meridian has their MQA technology which Tidal is supposed to be using at some point in the future, which for those that have a MQA DAC/Reciever/etc. will be able to listen to MQA enabled content when they finish converting the tracks. I have not heard MQA technology, but it’s supposed to make Lossless files even that much better and closer to the original masters. Again, I haven’t heard the technology, only read about it. We’ll see what happens down the road.
But Apple would have saved a whole lot of money by buying Tidal instead of Beats.
Martin Robertson: Jay Z being a thug shouldn’t make any difference should it? After all Dr. Dre having convictions for beating up women didn’t stop Apple giving him lots of money did it.
Aunty Troll, that’s why I have personally banned buying content on iTunes and Beats subscription or buying Beats headphones (plus they suck), until they get rid of Iovine and Dre. Both are losers in my book. I don’t like listening to or promoting rap music, it’s not good for society, it’s the music of choice amongst prison inmates which I choose not to socialize with. I’ve seen kids get involved with rap music and once they do, they try to talk, walk, dress and act like these thugs and then I see their lives go to ***t. It’s just the rock bottom of the music chain.
If Apple had just bought Tidal, life would have been much better for Apple. They need to kick up the QoS and not associate with the c-rap community since it’s predominately created by thugs with little to no musical background that cater to people that simply don’t want to study music on a more serious level.
Don’t get it twisted. I do agree Mainstream rap is TERRIBLE and the content of lyrics is often disgusting… at least nowadays the popular ones seem too, but there are a lot of underground or unheard of artists that don’t rap about hoes, thug life and etc. Do you ever hear about them? No.
There’s good music out there. We don’t need to look to mainstream to figure out what the next hottest music is going to be. The hottest artists are the ones we ignore.
Shaun Wilkinson: doesn’t matter if you or i think it sounds good it is meaningless statement without delivery specs and how its encoded.
Funny – 90 per cent of the artists on this teaser have enough ego to feed a third world country. Interesting that this kind of service attracted Kanye and the like.
I find it amazing that the people who responded that they “won’t be giving Jay-Z my money” or “stop using it when Jay-Z bought the company” had nothing to do with any issues about the quality (since they haven’t used after his purchase) or price points. They only mention moving away from it because of who he is, i.e. color of his skin. Sad