Thanks for posting this pizzosteez, you beat me to it. am_Unition, I'm on soundcloud, as are many of us here, but I'll admit that I use it primarily to post my own content and not to stream others. I agree that right now TIDAL isn't something I'd be interested in, I'm pretty content with Spotify, but I do think it sucks that artists get paid jack-shit for their work from them. There are two great points I hadn't thought about until reading this: Exactly right. So many people aren't using a service and if TIDAL can use it's star power and market themselves effectively, they could dominate. It's not first to market, right? It's last. Also, they have the ability to offer special releases and exclusive releases. If I knew my favorite bands were going to release certain songs only on TIDAL, it might matter. That said, how long would those songs stay only on TIDAL? In the digital age, nothing stays behind a wall long and as kleinbl00 points out in this amazing podcast, nothing is ephemeral. Once it's out there, it's out there. So, I'm not convinced that the value proposition for TIDAL is all that compelling compared to services that already exist. Does the average consumer give a shit that it's "artist owned?" Especially when those artists are Madonna, Cold Play, Jay-Z, Kanye etc? -Not exactly paupers. KB, what are your thoughts?The market of people who have never used a streaming service is still massive, and up for grabs.
I told Tidal why they'd fail almost two years ago. I was invited into the closed beta. Back then, they had a promise of all these great artists and great fidelity for only $9.99 a month. The problem? If you wanted to sample those great artists and great fidelity, you needed to give them a credit card. Spotify doesn't do that. Last.fm doesn't do that. Pandora doesn't do that. iTunes Radio doesn't do that. NOBODY does that. Oh, and sure - they won't charge you for a month. And sure - Netflix does that. But Netflix doesn't compete with anybody but Hulu, and Hulu stole marketshare from Netflix by letting you know exactly what you got if you paid $8 a month for Hulu Plus. I'm one of those guys that likes fidelity, and I would have liked to have tested it. I had a pretty good idea that they have nothing from anyone I want to hear; seeing Nicki Minaj on stage doesn't change that notion. So maybe it's the distance of knowing I'm triple-not interested in Tidal, but as far as I can tell, their clientele are those in the Venn overlap of the following four circles: - Those that listen to stuff you can hear on the radio whenever you want - Those that want to pay extra to hear it in high fidelity - Those that are willing to give over a credit card number to see if it's worth it - Those that aren't getting all they need from Pandora, Spotify and iTunes Radio I'm pretty sure that's a tiny little surface. I certainly wouldn't want to build a business off of it. Of course, that was before Jay-Z bought it for $56m. I dunno. I'm tempted to say "there's a sucker born every minute". Neil Young, after all, has already made the world yawn with his magic high resolution service.
I use SoundCloud for everything. I'm following an array of producers that have anywhere between 10 to 100,000 followers, while putting out my own content concurrently. Hell, you could even create several different profiles for various purposes. One for your solo production project, one for your procurement/consumption of others' music, and (an)other(s) where you collaborate with outside artists. EXACTLY. There is no exclusivity, anymore. This is the Internet. Ever heard of "Audio Hijack"? It's a program that records anything being passed through my soundcard by way of my Internet browser, or any other program that I specify. I have built a YouTube channel on this concept, and I find myself constantly linking to the artist's SoundCloud page, because that's where the content initially originates from. Apparently, because I am not a total idiot, I can use this tool tool (Audio Hijack) to capture 128 kbps audio from any source of realtime playback enabled audio files hosted on the entire Internet. And guess who will be disappointed with 128 kbps audio? Almost nobody. I wish I could tell you that I preferred higher bitrate audio to lower, but somewhere around ~200 kpbs, even expert audiophiles have to concede their humanity. One thing I have to knock SoundCloud on is their exclusion of any grandfathering for accounts established years ago. Like, say, my account. I had payed my money to these guys for several years just to host my content, and even when I've had a "Pro" account, "Suggested/Promoted" tracks still positioned themselves at the top of my SoundCloud feed. My immediate reaction to SoundCloud's montetization wasn't favorable, but it's been a slow process with minimal invasions on my feed. Indeed, If they do it right, I think it could be successful, but I have no insight or metrics on the implementation. All that said, SoundCloud is still a better utility when it comes to listening to a mix I'm working on vs. going through Apple's system. By way of Apple, it's either a hardline cord or the Apple Cloud, in which case I still prefer routing my bounce down through SoundCloud, for simplicity, granted that my mobile data plan isn't gasping for bandwidth....I'm on soundcloud, as are many of us here, but I'll admit that I use it primarily to post my own content and not to stream others.
That said, how long would those songs stay only on TIDAL?