In case you hadn’t heard, Jay-Z is this week launching (relaunching) the Tidal music service he recently acquired along with a lot of help from industry friends. The company is hoping its model is innovative and helps artists earn more, but its UI for the web app appears to be a shameless copy of Spotify, as you can see in the comparison screenshot: Tidal above, Spotify below.
The goal for Tidal, according to interviews with Jay-Z this week in Billboard and elsewhere, is essentially a value proposition for artists that feel they aren’t getting a fair share of revenues through streaming services like Spotify and Apple’s Beats — an issue that has picked up more attention recently when Taylor Swift decided to pull her music from Spotify. Swift’s music will be available on Tidal.
Now someone just needs to remind Jay-Z that UI designers are artists too.
It sure looks a lot like Tidal will be one of Apple’s biggest competitors for Beats and Apple’s upcoming revamped music service. In interviews this week promoting the launch of Tidal, Jay-Z claimed that Jimmy Iovine, the record industry bigwig and Beats cofounder, was attempting to lure away top-selling artists to join Apple’s upcoming service.
(Image via @de)
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We’ll be hearing of Tidal shutting down in the same way almost every other similar service does after they realize they aren’t able to monetize their platform.
If someone’s going to steal a significant piece of business away from the current market leaders, it’s Apple – and even that’s not guaranteed. But there simply isn’t enough room in this market for so many services. Sorry, Jay-Z, this isn’t terrestrial radio.
DOA
As a designer, the FIRST thing they tell you in school is you DON’T RIP other designer’s work. This most definitely came from the top down. They had to have told the designers “Just make it look like Spotify”. I can hear the groans of disgust now. I mean focus is even a light bulb. Really? You couldn’t think of ANYTHING else? A magnifying glass? A camera lens? It reeks of clueless management. Not that I’m hating, I work for a place like that, so I can relate.
They all kind of look like iTunes, only black. It’s a black thing. ;-)
The format is based off WiMP, which Spotify copied off of.
Guess who owns WiMP? JAY Z. Atrocious journalism.
https://dribbble.com/shots/1623433-WiMP-Web-Client
Please read the comments…
Well this is WiMP:
http://www.recordjet.com/blog/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/08/Bildschirmfoto-2013-08-13-um-16.42.30.png
So I’m guessing you mean Spotify copied the layout? Or showing the album artwork? If so, then why not just claim that almost every app that has a sidebar section copied WiMP?
Tidal copied Spotify’s interface brick by brick. From almost identical iconography to colour scheme.
I think you are being a little ignorant of how things actually work.
First of all.. The screenshot is from their, very old, desktop app. Take a look at their web player.
Second.. During the design process there where no intent of copying Spotify’s design. When it was designed it was for WiMP, which have a very different identity than TIDAL.
I can tell you that i was in charge of the icon design for WiMP, and I spend a lot of time making icons that are unique to WiMP. They may resemble the same thing, after all most if the iconography you see use the same objects to ensure easy recognition and understanding. But visually i would disagree that they are “Almost identical”. They are clearly two very different visual styles.
When WiMP was live, TIDAL emerged out of that. TIDAL needed a new identity, and is therefore just a reskin of WiMP. Unfortunately the identity that was chosen, made it look a lot like Spotify. But thats mainly because both Spotify and TIDAL uses basic UI elements in a dark color scheme. They both use widely used navigational patterns and terminology. This is nothing new, anywhere on the internet. It is, most of the time, good practice if you want to make your UI easy to understand for new users.
UIs will always be similar between rivalling services like this because a big part of UI design is about building on established patterns that users will intuitively get. In this case it becomes way too apparent though when even the color schemes are the same.
@sclausen_dk,
I don’t think I’m being ignorant at all. I’m sorry that you took offence to what I said and it’s completely understandable as you clearly worked hard on it. But that doesn’t change what I was saying. Admittedly I was looking at their old desktop app but looking at their new web app it doesn’t really change much.
You yourself said: “There is no reason to make a different design, just because it looks like something else. We have worked hard on choosing the solutions we think works the best.” via your Dribbble shot. And what you’ve said is completely true. I said nothing about the choice that best suit the business model or plan that WIMP or Tidal have set. The discussion here is about how incredibly similar the designs are and that’s all that I was saying as a reply to the first comment about how Spotify copied WIMP’s UI.
I meant no offence, I understand that you worked hard, I never said otherwise. I was discussing the incredible similarities.
That’s what I call Lay-Z designers
One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”
http://genius.com/Jay-z-money-cash-hoes-lyrics
Most artists/bands have recording and distribution contracts through the big record labels/distribution companies. They own the recordings and they have to recoup the production costs and marketing costs first before they pay the artist(s) royalties. I’m sure some artists that are big enough might opt for selling content direct through Tidal, but they still have to pay for marketing and production costs, can’t get away from that. I think Jay-z sounds like Mr. BS artist.
The challenge is whether or not Tidal is going to make enough profits and lure enough people to sign up for Lossless, when most average people either don’t use good enough equipment to actually hear enough difference in Lossless vs Lossy or see the value proposition and pay for the increased price in Lossless vs Lossy.
The other challenge is simply making a profit. No one has been able to prove that the streaming service is profitable. I don’t know how many people that buy music is going to go through a streaming service in the first place.
The fact that they want to charge $20 for what they call high fidelity is so lame. That just means your $10 service is just poor quality and nobody will even want that. I’ll stick with my free iTunes Radio thanks. Bye!
I’ve been using Tidal now for a few months and I love it. I don’t mind paying the $20 a month if it means the artists I love get a higher share of the royalties and they continue to support streaming their music. 10 years ago you couldn’t purchase a single cd for less than $20 and now all you self entitled assholes are complaining about unlimited access to a music library that is cd quality or better. If you have any appreciation for quality music and the artist that create it than this is a steal in my opinion. The more artists that get behind a streaming service like this the better, it means more exclusives, better quality and happier musicians.
Would you pay $50? $100? how much money is it worth to give the artists the best deal? People are going after the service which gives them the most value for the lowest amount of money, that’s not a bad thing.
While your position is admirable, it is likely not shared by the vast majority of consumers. People will go to great lengths to save a few dollars.
Look at the mass chaos that is Black Friday shopping every year. People inflict injury on (and sometimes even kill) one another in the hopes of saving money on Christmas presents! You really think they care if Nickleback gets extra money? I don’t! I hope Nickleback never gets any money ever again! I HATE NICKLEBACK!!! SCREW YOU NICKLEBACK!!!!!!!!!
*screams in background*
Sorry. I’m back. I got a little carried away there. The point is… People aren’t going to pay extra to support an artist if they can pay less elsewhere.
What it cost to buy a CD 10 years ago is irrelevant. Advancements in society and in technology will always bring changes in consumer habits. There are markets that were booming 10 years ago that today are completely non-existent. The music industry will have to come to terms with the fact that it’s not feasible to expect the same revenue streams that they saw in the 90’s.
I don’t think it will do well.
There’s like zero chance this’ll succeed.
The price a rather steep for the casual music lover (Spotify is half the price or free with ads), you need a really good setup to actually hear the difference in the lossless format.
They will probably advertise this with Beats which would make like zero sense since those aren’t anywhere near of being capable to defer lossless from lossy.
I call this another big marketing stunt and lame initiative for music steaming (remember how Beat streaming really catched on? Me neither)
Shameless
When pirating music was all the rage, people used to say that it hurt the labels and not the artists because artists get most of their income from concerts and merchandise. Is that not the case anymore?
The only people to say that were the pirates. It’s irrelevant …
Okay, I just se a bunch of billionaires trying to get us to understand, that they earn too little …
And in other news, a group of homeless musicians were paraded on stage to solicit donations for Jay-Z … http://dandygoat.com/modern-day-music-slaves-soliciting-donations-of-20-a-month
At first I thought the image was solely the Tidal window, and I was thinking, hmm, the top half doesn’t look much like Spotify, but the bottom half looks EXACTLY like Spotify! Turns out I was right.
There are similarities, but it’s not a blatant ripoff.