Jay Z signs a manifesto about the future of the Tidal music service, at the announcement of the project in New York, March 30, 2015. Jay Z unveiled his plans for Tidal Monday, a subscription streaming service that he said will be majority-owned by artists themselves. (Sam Hodgson/The New York Times)SAM HODGSON/The New York Times
The artist-owned streaming music service Tidal faced another setback Tuesday as interim chief executive Peter Tonstad left the company.
Mr. Tonstad stepped up to the role in April after previous CEO Andy Chen left the company, operated by Norway's Aspiro AB.
In an e-mailed statement, Tidal spokesperson Jana Fleischman told The Globe that the company would be "transitioning to a permanent CEO" soon, and that its executives in Oslo and New York would hold the reins for the time being. "We are thankful to Peter for stepping in as interim CEO and wish him the best for the future," she said.
Tidal, which launched in both Canada and the U.S. last winter, offers unlimited streaming of both standard– and high-fidelity music for $10 and $20 a month, respectively. A company affiliated with New York rapper Jay Z bought the company soon after; in March, he and a cabal of artists, ranging from Kanye West to members of Arcade Fire, revealed that they were co-owners.
Mr. Tonstad's departure is the latest in a series of tough blows for the company, including falling from the Apple app store's top apps and rumours of low subscription numbers. The rough ride the celebrity-endorsed service has endured is another sign that even though streaming is being hailed as the future of music, the road ahead isn't necessarily going to be an easy one.
Most subscription services charge about $10 a month for unlimited streaming from libraries of 20 to 35 million songs. Apple announced in June that it would finally enter the fray in the face of declining song downloads, hoping to convert its millions of iTunes users into paying customers simply by already having them in their ecosystem.
As they rush to win market share ahead of Apple Music's launch, the companies have been fighting to differentiate themselves. Rdio, one of the first to enter Canada in 2010, is offering a 25-song-a-day $4 tier. World leader Spotify, which has 20 million paying users, recently announced new features to keep users in the app for music, audio and video content all day. On Tuesday, Google announced it would offer an ad-supported free tier of its Google Play Music service with stations curated by the people behind playlist giant Songza.
Tidal first differentiated itself as a product for audiophiles, offering "lossless" audio, or files that did not lose CD-level quality from compression, for about $20 a month – double the industry standard. (To hear this difference, though, listeners need high-quality hardware, too.) The purchase by Jay Z's consortium gave it another value-add: not only would artists be running the service, but musicians, both famous and new, would offer exclusive content that could only be streamed on Tidal.
Mr. Chen left the company soon after that amid news of restructuring, and, according to website App Annie, Tidal fell out of Apple's U.S. App Store top 750 around the same time, only occasionally popping back in. (In the same time period, Spotify hasn't fallen lower than No. 20.) To assuage concerns of ailing numbers, Jay Z took to Twitter to announce that Tidal had signed up 770,000 users in less than a month.
Tidal is not the only streaming service to fight controversy lately. Independent labels the world over cried out when a leaked contract revealed no rightsholders would be paid during the three-month free trial Apple will offer for its streaming service. It took an open letter from pop powerhouse Taylor Swift – who wrote on behalf of artists less moneyed than herself – to get Apple to reverse its course this past Sunday.
Josh O’Kane