Wait, so Jay Z's business ventures aren't automatically guaranteed to be a success? That's new.
The music mogul and a few of his famous friends—including Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Deadmau5, Daft Punk, Alicia Keys, Rihanna and wife Beyoncé—launched the Tidal app last month, a new music streaming service that was billed as "the first music streaming service that combines the best high fidelity sound quality, high definition music videos and expertly curated editorial."
But the talking point? The price. Tidal is not a free service. Users have a choice between paying $10 a month for digital audio-quality (a compressed format similar to what you get with Spotify) or $20 a month for CD-quality sound.
And it turns out that people are not a fan.
Two weeks after Tidal briefly cracked the U.S. iPhone top 20 download chart, the app has crashed out of the top 700, according to BGR. Do you understand what that means? There are 700 other apps that people like more than Tidal. That's gotta hurt.
So why the drastic flop? Well, despite being backed by some huge names, it seems like users couldn't get behind an app that charged so much money when there were other apps that offered basically the same service for much less (if not free), charging the debate that argues Tidal is moreso for the artists than the consumers.
In fact, BGR also reports that as of April 20, Pandora and Spotify occupied positions No. 3 and No. 4 on the U.S. iPhone revenue chart, respectively. This was the first time two music streaming services have hit the top 4 in sales simultaneously.
However, Hov's app could make a comeback. This follows news from Friday that saw Tidal lay off 25 employees, including its founding CEO Andy Chen. According to Business Insider, a memo from the company said, "We've eliminated a handful of positions and refocused our company-wide talent to address departments that need support and cut redundancies."
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