After pulling her entire catalogue from Spotify, guess where Taylor Swift is putting it up? Pandora? No. Rdio? Not that either. Grooveshark? Wrong again. It ain’t even Songza.
Instead Swift has thrown in her hat with rapper Jay Z’s upstart Tidal, which, at the time of writing, boasts a paltry 17,000 users compared to the hundreds of thousands that its more established competitors boast of.
As you’d expect, Tidal isn’t free either. The service, which aims to provide CD-quality streaming, offers subscribers access to 25 million tracks, 75,000 music videos and other content including artist interviews for £19.99 per month.
We are guessing that Jay-Z, who recently purchased the parent company for Tidal and its European counterpart WiMP for $56.2 million, may have convinced the 25 year-old star to join Tidal with the promise of higher royalty payouts. Jay Z is definitely taking his new role as Tidal owner very seriously. According to reports, the rapper met with the “music version of the Avengers” just prior to the Grammy’s to discuss how Tidal could be made into a bulwark against “crass commercialism.” In other words, the musicians want better compensation for their art. Those in attendance reportedly included Madonna, Kanye West, Daft Punk, Nikki Minaj, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Jack White, Rihanna, and Jay Z’s wife Beyoncé.
Also, to be fair to Swift, her gripe with streaming is limited to ad-supported freemium services like Spotify, and her work continues to be available through a number of paid on-demand streaming platforms, including Rdio, Rhapsody, and Beats Music.
We’ll have to wait and see if the Swift name—coupled with the cachet of Jay Z’s branding—will bring her devoted legions of fans over to Tidal, though it’s a tough sell to users, at a rate that’s twice as expensive as Beats or even Google Play Music.
