Streaming tears of laughter as Jay-Z (Tidal) waves goodbye to $56m

Where's Kanye when you need him?

Wave of stupefaction

On Tuesday this week, a rag-tag collection of dreary, empty-headed multi-millionaires gathered on stage in an attempt to squeeze even more money out their lack of brains or talent. According to the speeches at the launch event, Tidal is not just a new audio format (it is), nor just a streaming service (it definitely is), but an entirely new way of listening to your favourite music (it certainly isn’t).

Oh, my mistake, Tidal does offer something new: you can’t sample even a single second of its content without paying up-front. In this respect it is revolutionary in being the only music retail service on the planet that prevents you from discovering music you have not already heard before or already own on other formats. Even a crappy old record shop lets you listen first, buy later. Not Tidal.

We are told that Tidal is revolutionary in offering “CD-quality” downloads. Well, excuse me if I’m missing a trick here, but CD-quality isn’t revolutionary: you get that already by listening to a CD.

In fact, the only revolutionary aspect of Tidal appears to be the pricing. Tidal’s top audio quality band costs twice as much as Spotify, while its average-quality streaming band costs the same as Spotify Premium. Doubling the price, according to the millionaires at the Tidal launch, will ensure they receive more money – a curious incentive for the customer, indeed.

Basically, there are two levels of service available: one that sucks and the other that also sucks. As David Cameron always says, hard-working families want to exercise choice.

This should not absolve Spotify of its own sins. As I have mentioned before in this column, the largest music streaming services have a nasty policy of paying big-name artists bigger percentages while paying less mainstream artists little or nothing, regardless of download numbers.

For those challenged by basic maths, let me repeat that I’m talking about royalty percentages, here. Sure, if an artist enjoys more downloads, he or she would expect to earn more money. But if celebrity step-tumbler Madonna and an unknown act each have their songs downloaded exactly 100,000 times, there is no logical or moral reason for the caped staircase acrobat to be receiving more royalties simply for being more famous.

The live Tidal launch was not helped by the distracting background whistling noise of the wind passing between the ears of Tidal’s owners. It was an extraordinary thing to see such a bizarre line-up of plastic-faced women, sour-faced men, the giant papier-maché bastard offspring of Mickey Mouse and Frank Sidebottom and a couple of lost motorbike dispatch riders who, judging by the way they swayed back and forth from foot to foot during the speeches, must have wandered on-stage while looking for the gents.

Alicia Keys typified the presentation, her speech being a surreal sales pitch for the streaming service comprising such uncompelling reasons to sign up as “Today is the day, today is the day, today is the day... ha ha... today is the day... (etc)” and quoting both Jimi Hendrix and some bloke called Fred-rick Nee-chee, who I think once played bass for Cher.