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.