Musicians including Kanye
West, Rihanna and Beyoncé have turned their Twitter profiles blue to
promote Tidal, the streaming music service recently acquired by Jay Z.
Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Deadmau5 and Jay Z himself
are among the other artists taking part in the campaign, which comes hours
before the rapper is due to announce his plans for Tidal at a press conference.
The musicians have replaced their
Twitter profile pictures and header images with blank blue images – actually
turquoise, if we’re being picky – in the kind of coordinated campaign that’s
more often used for charitable purposes.
Tidal is a Spotify rival originally launched
by Norwegian firm Aspiro in
October 2014, before the company was acquired
by Project Panther Bidco, a company controlled by Jay Z, in March
2015.
Tidal’s key selling point so far has
been its “lossless” quality streams, for which the company charges a monthly
subscription of £19.99 – double its rivals. It is available in 31 countries,
with six
more to follow by the end of June.
Tidal’s
website has been counting down to
a press conference due to take place at 10pm BST today (Monday 30 March) at
which Jay Z is expected to announce his plans for the service.
Some of those plans have leaked already,
with a report
earlier in March by entertainment site Showbiz 411 that he had convened a
summit of music stars –
Madonna, Kanye West, Daft Punk, Nicki Minaj, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Jack
White, Beyoncé and Rihanna included – to outline his ambitions.
“The subject was how they could turn
Aspiro – which will be known in the U.S. as TidalHifi when it relaunches – into
a streaming music and video service akin to the old United Artists pictures, in
which artists would actually profit from their art and put out quality
material.
In 1919, a handful of
movie stars – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and director
D.W. Griffith – banded together and started their own studio to combat what
they saw as growing commercialism of the majors. I’m told that Jay Z, who can
be a bit of a visionary, sees his new service just this way.”
Meanwhile, in a recent
press release, the company described Tidal as “a single destination
for artists and fans to share ideas, exclusive content, songs, videos, studio
sessions, rough tracks, personal conversations and more”.
Project Panther Bidco paid $56m for
Aspiro, which ended
2014 with 500,000 paying users for
its subscription services. Tidal will compete with Spotify, Deezer and other
streaming services, with Apple
also set to relaunch its own Beats Musicwhile YouTube brings its YouTube
Music Key out of
invite-only beta.
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