TIDAL, a tsunami of failure?
TIDAL launched a PR tsunami. Unless you didn’t have internet, it was impossible to escape the massive marketing campaign promoting its relaunch in 2015. Beyonce was there, Jay-Z was there, Niki Minaj, Madonna, Deadmau5, you name it, they were probably there.
The concept behind the TIDAL business model is allowing artists to receive the highest percentage of royalties. Now, let’s be clear when we are talking about artists we are talking about Kayne West ( est.$1.3 billion), Madonna ($850 Million), Deadmau5 (est $50.000) and the list goes on. TIDAL was built on the assumption that the general public would feel morally obligated to access music to the artist’s best interest and therefore subscribe to a monthly fee. ( up to USD 19.99 a month for the premium Hifi service)
From the consumer’s perspective, it was tough to empathize with the cause. Artists might be losing money due to bad royalties deals, they might be losing money due to illegal downloading and the music industry profit shrinking but overall these artists are still reaching the 1% earning brackets. With Tidal they are asking the 99% to sacrifice a sizable portion of their monthly income to further support them.
To make the matter worst — TIDAL’s second assumption was that people would pay for content if the artist decided to release it exclusively through the platform. From the customer's perspective, this very much felt like black-mailing. It might have convinced a few Beyonce die-hard fans to temporarily subscribe to the service to access the very well advertised “Lemonade” album. To the rest of the world, it just felt frustrating to be constantly bombarded with advertisements and yet not being able to access the content. Overall it seems like the social impact of the visual album has been softened by its inaccessibility. Trends pass quickly, and people have little patience. A more throughout user experience research with a focus on empathy might have brought TIDAL a long way…
