Jay Z

Jay Z is trying to prove, once again, he’s not just a businessman, he’s a business, man with his new venture, Tidal.

OK, but really, what is Tidal? If you’ve somehow missed the gist from the media circus: It’s a high-quality streaming service that will provide higher compensation for the artists, and it will cost you more. But there are still a lot of questions to be answered.

How many people will care about the “lossless quality”?

If you subscribe to Tidal’s $19.99 per month service, you will get the music in FLAC — which means that it’s in a lossless form instead of in MP3. MP3 files are very lossy, meaning that there’s a lot information missing. These files do deliver the music itself but some of us want to make sure that we get the purest possible quality delivered to our ears.

Not a small amount of people, including yours truly, do care about audio file quality, but most people don’t. They just want to hear the music. You don’t even need the highest-quality MP3 to hear what a song sounds like. A lot of the people use $25 earbuds similar to those available in University Book Center, and it’d be close to impossible for them to discern the difference between FLAC and MP3 with those. It’s the subtlest of subtle differences, even with the best headgear money can buy.

If you really want to try Tidal but don’t want to pay that much, you can opt for a $9.99 per month service and get a 160 kbps quality, which is the equivalent of the streaming quality Spotify offers via its free, ad-supported service. By the way, using a student discount, Spotify Premium costs $4.99 per month, but I guess not enough of that makes it back to the artists. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Where’s the smaller artist representation?

There’s nothing wrong with big-name artists getting what they deserve. But I didn’t see much support from any smaller independent artists regarding Tidal. Wednesday, Jay Z and Tidal executive Vania Schlogel did a Q & A session at New York University. When asked about smaller artists, Schlogel said, “We’re still a very young, nascent company and we have a lot of initiatives that we’re working on, especially when it comes to indie talent, emerging talent, giving people visibility, giving people a forum to put their music up and giving them control of their distribution and their creative content.” That’s a long way of saying, “We’re not ready to please the ‘indie’ crowd, but we’re trying!!!”

I’m sure they want to appeal to as many people as possible. Their big project right now is including as many artists as possible. If all goes as planned, Tidal will be able to not only be a hub to various tastes but also compensate obscure indie musicians that truly need support to move forward.

So, will Tidal eventually put Spotify out of business?

Tidal is more artist-friendly and Spotify is more user-friendly. I can see a good chunk of people switching to the former because of the very intense marketing campaign. But as long as Spotify continues being easy-to-use and cheap, I don’t think its popularity will dramatically diminish — people are too used to it. Also, save that extra $10 to $15 or so on a trip to an Applebee’s karaoke night.

Tidal, however, has intriguing potential. Here’s a telltale sign: Taylor Swift’s albums are available on Tidal (barring 1989), and so is Rihanna’s new single. But neither are on Spotify. Heck, why not just start speculating Kanye West will release his next album exclusively on Tidal?

I am happy that people now have a choice. Competition is good for the market. I already have a Spotify Premium subscription, but I might bite on Tidal’s 30-day free trial just for the heck of it.

If you aren’t intrigued by Tidal, I don’t blame you at all. But keep on eye on it — big artists have power to make things happen. Maybe not to you personally, but toward the music industry, potentially yes.