Block (formerly Square) acquires TIDAL
- Thread starter MikeyFresh
- Start date
I have nothing against Square, they've helped a lot of artists (and small retailers including my wife) sell their art. But this just seems to me that Tidal is now going to become not just a streaming service, but an app that's constantly going to be trying to sell me stuff. And sometimes...I just want to listen to music.
I was excited until I read the tweet. I think TIDAL is great but needs new direction in terms of music discovery and recommendations. It is definitely not 'inclusive' when it comes to those issues.
Tidal would sure stand to have someone go in with a pair of shears and just trim the 100 re-recorded versions of so many songs I search for. Stuff from the 50s or 60s is particularly bad.
I agree it's an odd match. There must be some reason Square wanted a financially disadvantaged music streamer. I also wonder about Square's future as they've acquired five other companies since 2018.
I'll never use tidal as they do a few things that I don't agree with, but that's another thread entirely.
I'll never use tidal as they do a few things that I don't agree with, but that's another thread entirely.
"We'll work on entirely new listening experiences to bring fans closer together". Oh great....
C'mon Qobuz, new customer sittin' right here.
C'mon Qobuz, new customer sittin' right here.
A lot of that has to do with how the music is licensed. The streaming services get those from the distributors or the labels. Thing is, a given distributor or label may have 1,000 good recordings along with 500 knock-offs, so we have to take the good with the bad.
What crumbles my cookies more are the grey market releases from the EU that clutter up so many of the jazz listings. Those are the ones that repackage albums or make their own compilations, all behind terribly amateurish cover art or knockoffs of the original cover art so they don't get into copyright issues with the photographs used on the originals. It's shady, and the sources for the music are suspect as well. (This even carries over to vinyl, and those skeevy off-brand record labels.)
Qobuz does have fewer knockoffs than, say, Amazon, but this view of albums on Qobuz (via Roon) gives me eight albums, five of which are knock-offs:
This article in Variety sort of hints at or suggests the grand plan that Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey have involves a future distribution model that is more or less artist direct to consumer, with the one middle man being TIDAL. In that sense TIDAL takes the role of distributor away from the greedy record labels.
It's probably high time that the label's rip-off game ends, and this could very well foreshadow that. Spotify too more than hinted at this kind of thing in that Stream-On presentation a couple of weeks ago, suggesting they support the artist with tools and resources that enable them far better than the record labels ever did.
The big 3 labels Warner, Universal, and Sony will of course still remain relevant due to owning rights to the vast back catalog of music recorded over the past 70 years or so, but the day that new artists need a record label to get heard or to make an album/recording do appear to be numbered. I can see the day when an artist might sign with TIDAL, Spotify, or Apple, and not with one of the big 3 record labels.
It's probably high time that the label's rip-off game ends, and this could very well foreshadow that. Spotify too more than hinted at this kind of thing in that Stream-On presentation a couple of weeks ago, suggesting they support the artist with tools and resources that enable them far better than the record labels ever did.
The big 3 labels Warner, Universal, and Sony will of course still remain relevant due to owning rights to the vast back catalog of music recorded over the past 70 years or so, but the day that new artists need a record label to get heard or to make an album/recording do appear to be numbered. I can see the day when an artist might sign with TIDAL, Spotify, or Apple, and not with one of the big 3 record labels.
fascinating. now it is starting to make sense.
I just don't know how much I buy it, rather than it being trading one devil for another. A friend of mine in a moderately successful band showed me how much he made for several million streams on Spotify and it was laughable. Tidal isn't really much better. JayZ and Jack Dorsey exist to make money, and I just don't have it in me to believe they really have the artists best interests in mind. Same with Spotify.
But I do love anything that shivs the record labels. The past couple of new albums I've bought I've ordered directly from the artists, and they were either on their own label or a small label that had a fairer relationship with its artists.
But I do love anything that shivs the record labels. The past couple of new albums I've bought I've ordered directly from the artists, and they were either on their own label or a small label that had a fairer relationship with its artists.
I don't dispute that at all, but I also don't think anyone could possibly screw the artists worse than the labels have. They've been sued repeatedly over the years, with nothing more than a "sloppy accounting" alibi to explain when they get caught redhanded not paying out artist royalties. They are crooks, and always have been, and now their time is up, they have no creative or innovative solution to offer.
Technology at least holds the possibility of fair accounting moving forward, though the deals struck and what the artists will get paid per stream, and how the upfront production and enablement tools being touted are counted against that revenue remains to be seen.
Like before, the artists will need good representation at contract time, hire the best damn agent, lawyer and accountant you can possibly muster, or only sign a very short term deal that allows a renegotiation should your music become popular. Only ever grant a limited license to distribute, follow the path of trend setters like Robert Fripp and David Bowie 50 years ago, never grant anything in perpetuity, retain the full ownership or have full ownership revert back to you after a certain number of years. You own the masters, not them.
Labels were awful. Basically you were signing up for indentured servitude and acquired a debt upfront that you never got out from under. Many/most bands came out of it with nothing or less than they started with. The problem with streaming is that it hasn't improved things. Bands make nada from streaming. They have to tour to survive. A lot of the friends I had in moderately successful bands quit doing it as when streaming took over they went from making little, to making nothing. It's fun and cool for a bit but the novelty wears off, families come along, and its not sustainable. The labels did it, and streaming also did it. I just don't trust any of them. I'll be VERY happy to be proven wrong, though.
Maybe once the labels are effectively cut out of the picture the streaming model can be better and more sustainable for the remaining stake holders. Right now it's only he labels getting rich off streaming, so if that piece is removed from the equation, and that money added back into the pot, I'd like to think there could then be an equitable distribution that would make the artists money, and allow the streaming services not to lose money hand over fist like they currently are.
Anything is better than the current situation in which lawyered up record label execs powered by deep pocketed private equity ownership resources have effectively grabbed all of the money. It can't stay that way.
I could see that maybe working for new artists. And things are a bit better for new artists that have figured out how to do it without a label. Even some established artists I know have either ditched or lost their labels, and are just engaging listeners and fans directly. But then I question what this new variant of Tidal offers, because they really don't need that...they can go around them, too. Over the pandemic as live shows ceased to be, artists I follow have offered, direct, their albums, hand-written lyrics sheets, live-streamed for a low-price private concerts over zoom/twitch or whatever, mini-sort-of-but-not-really-albums on bandcamp for purchase...etc. I guess Tidal could offer a kind of congregation of that output in one place, that's attached to streaming? So you stream an artist and then can also on the same page/channel, find all of that other fan-related content/product. That might be interesting if the artist still gets the majority of the $$. Like how Square charges a fee but it's not exorbitant. It doesn't take so much that it makes the transaction meaningless.
For you Detroit area folks, feel free to (given Covid situation) check out Musician | Olivia Dear (formerly Olivia Millerschin) once she starts up live shows again.
She got a JayZ Tidal grant a year ago. I saw her back in 2013 when she sat in with the jazz band at the school I was teaching at.
She got a JayZ Tidal grant a year ago. I saw her back in 2013 when she sat in with the jazz band at the school I was teaching at.
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If artists fall for the trap of going direct to digital with their art, they are dead man walking themselves into accounting jobs. And we will have nothing but single songs to pull up or curated playlists of the junk the company feels is what we should be listening to.
I think that's a bit reason for vinyl taking off in the last decade. Both artists and listeners benefit from having a 'thing' to interact with, something tangible.
My wife, a photographer, has been struggling in the digital age but last year published a book, an actual book, which is leading to the sale of more physical prints...something I've been begging her to focus on for years. Sell more prints! (some) People want real stuff. She's moving along from existing on taking photos, to selling fine art photos. Which I would think is probably more fulfilling anyway?
I don't paint all labels as bad, but established artists (at least in the music I listen to) have moved away from big label contracts to smaller labels to which they license their recordings. That lets them retain their masters, and get a better deal along with the marketing and distribution clout a label offers. Streaming is the black sheep in the family even today (income is laughable) but being part of a well-run label has advantages.
I can't give a name here but since 1996 I've worked (in a support capacity) with a band that recorded for a couple of major labels. Warner at first, then MCA, which then got absorbed into GRP (when Universal decided to shift much of MCA's jazz catalog to GRP), then back to Warner for three albums. With the third Warner contract (which is when I hopped on board), the label made them great promises, only to find after the first album, label support for them evaporated completely.
Being with a label is a necessity, but not how you'd think. When their contract expired with Warner, they were without a label. And without a label, they didn't have a new product out. Many of the "name" jazz clubs will not hire a band for a gig unless they have a current release. So, very little income (after expenses) from the few gigs they could make. It took us a couple of years of Internet sales (where we sold current and past CDs) before they got enough funds to record, manufacture and release a live gig of mostly new tunes, and the only sales online were through their own site. But that broke the ice and the gigs started returning, and it caught the attention of a Telarc subsidiary, HeadsUp International, who licensed their next few recordings. That put them back on track. Then they made a similar deal with Mack Avenue Records (a local label), where they are currently.
While Warner would occasionally reissue an older recording (like their debut), Universal will not budge. There was still fan demand for the older recordings, but all Universal would do is toss out an ill-conceived anthology every half dozen years. And now I'm betting their masters are lost after the Universal Spit Roast of 2008. 🙄 Warner similarly shows no interest in reissuing the back catalog either. And due to the contracts, the labels own the masters, and can do with them what they please, even if it goes against the artists' wishes. The labels have no interest in releasing the masters to the artist, even for a price. Disgusting, if you ask me.
A couple of artists I follow are also on their own labels (like The Mavericks on Mondo Mono Records, and Four80East on Boomtang Records), or on smaller specialist labels (Colemine, Daptone, etc.).
It's kind of ironic to me how it has all played out. We started in the 50s and 60s with hundreds of tiny record labels popping up everywhere, and a small handful of major labels. Then the majors started absorbing these independent labels, or taking the artists onto their own roster, and that killed off most of the small labels. It got to a point where you were on a major label, or your music just couldn't get it released to a wide audience. Now we've seen an explosion of smaller labels again, many created out of frustration with the majors, and some artists even self-releasing to avoid labels entirely. The Internet has played a huge role in this, via getting the word out to fans, as well as providing new means of distribution.
It's gotta matter what the genre of music is as well I guess. Jazz almost no outlet to get their stuff out in the air so one has to wonder if in the long run streaming will be good for jazz, and other similar genre that have no easy sell on radio. Hell, even the one larger record store here in town that pretends to be all hip and cool and about music you cant find easily puts very little effort into Jazz. Rarely do they have new releases on hand unless it's for record store day.
I'll go ahead and say it, we get way too much for our $ with streaming and I am surprised it's this inexpensive really. But it's being taken out on the artists as everyone else in the chain seems to be getting theirs first.
I'll go ahead and say it, we get way too much for our $ with streaming and I am surprised it's this inexpensive really. But it's being taken out on the artists as everyone else in the chain seems to be getting theirs first.
I don't see how streaming is viable in the long run, either. Even the biggest, Spotify, has never actually made a profit. And I have no idea why Square would have bought Tidal, as its operating on a loss, too. So the artists are losing, the streaming services are losing, and the labels certainly aren't making what physical media used to make for them.
