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Jimmy Iovine tried to lure key Tidal artists away to Apple, but no hard feelings, says Jay Z

Jay Z Performs At O2 Arena In London

Jay Z suggested in an interview with Billboard that Jimmy Iovine had tried to lure away top-selling artists from his newly-relaunched streaming music service, Tidal, but that he wasn’t angry about it. Iovine had reputedly offered more up-front cash to Tidal artists who agreed to do a deal with Apple.

I think that’s just his competitive nature, and I don’t know if he’s looking at the bigger picture: That it’s not about me and it’s not about him; it’s about the future of the music business.

The rap and hip-hop star said that he had initially hoped to work in cooperation with Iovine, having “talked to every single service,” but had apparently been rebuffed … 

Jay Z said that he was confident Apple would do great things with its own Beats Music-based streaming music service, and that there was room for Tidal also.

My thing with Jimmy is, “Listen, Jimmy; you’re Jimmy Iovine, and you’re Apple, and truthfully, you’re great. You guys are going to do great things with Beats, but … you know, I don’t have to lose in order for you guys to win, and let’s just remember that.” Again, I’m not angry. I actually told him, “Yo, you should be helping me. This is for the artist. These are people that you supported your whole life. You know, this is good.”

That Apple was finally moving into streaming music was, he said, the ultimate proof that this is the future of music.

When the biggest distributor of downloads says they’re going to start a streaming company, I mean, I don’t know what more you need to know that it’s the next format. 

The USP of Tidal for artists is that it offers them an equity share of the business, rather than just small royalty payments, in return for agreeing to make their releases available on an exclusive basis for a short time. Those artists who joined in the first round, so-called Tier 1 artists, got the biggest stakes, while those who join in the next round will get a smaller stake. It is, says Jay Z, about the people who create the music seeing a fair return.

Will artists make more money? Even if it means less profit for our bottom line, absolutely. That’s easy for us. We can do that. Less profit for our bottom line, more money for the artist; fantastic. Let’s do that today.

The USP for subscribers is the choice of standard streaming at $9.99/month or a high-definition stream for $19.99/month.

Apple’s rebranded Beats Music service is expected to be announced at WWDC in June, likely as part of iOS 8.4. Apple had initially hoped to offer a $5/month subscription but been unable to strike the necessary deals with labels. It is reportedly still hoping to hit a $7.99/month price-point, though this too is looking unlikely.

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Comments

  1. Gregory Wright - 9 years ago

    Why would Jay-Z be angry.? He knows the deal. Jay-Z’s Sports Management Agency, Rock Nation, is poaching high profile sports stars. No need to be a hypocrite.

  2. lofye - 9 years ago

    When Tidal flops (because people won’t pay more for it), the artists will all go crawling back to iTunes/Beats.

    • chrisl84 - 9 years ago

      And then go crawling even further back to Spotify when people dont want to leave their 50 playlists they spent years building to start from scratch on Beats.

      • 1234 - 9 years ago

        Unless Apple makes a conversion tool….

      • chrisl84 - 9 years ago

        This is what I was hoping….

      • ruinelsoncarneiro - 9 years ago

        Apple already has your playlist.

        Enormous amount of data recorded from Genius + iTunes.

        Human curation from Beats team…

      • chrisl84 - 9 years ago

        Apple does not have my Spotify playlist. And human curation is marketing mumbo jumbo that is no better at knowing what I want to listen to than an algorithm.

  3. Gazoo Bee - 9 years ago

    This sounds like BS to me. Tidal is the the service that has the look of a desperation, not Beats.

    Tidal was:
    – organised at the last minute in retaliation to Beats
    – only has A-list acts because they are all getting a percentage of the company profits
    – has literally no acts other than those money grubbing A-lister friends of Jay Z.
    – has basically ripped off all it’s engineering and design from other sources

    There is also the fact that based on what we’ve heard so far, Tidal will cost about FOUR TIMES as much as Beats. If I was a betting person, Wouldn’t bet on Tidal.

    • actually, most of the recent rumors suggest that 4.99/mo isn’t gonna happen. i’m sure you knew that though.

      • Gazoo Bee - 9 years ago

        I didn’t, but even if true, it just makes the comparison ever so slightly different. $20 is a lot.

    • lefthandedphoto - 9 years ago

      You’re pretty much right on all points. The media story is this is supposed to support all Tidal contributing artists when, in fact, it’s only the Tier 1 folks who will be making the big money. That’s the scam of Tidal. Millions to Jay-Z, Madonna, and their buddies (Could Alicia Keyes sound any more cliched and phony in her little presentation speech?); pennies to everyone else. Streaming music has a very low adoption rate (so far), so it’s unlikely changing upwards of $40/month is going to attract many subscribers. I think Apple Beats and Spotify will dominate, with Google placing a tight third. It’s going to come down to pricing, selection and ease-of-use.

  4. Joe Cheng - 9 years ago

    judging by the launch date and eerily similar UI to Spotify, this effort does seem rushed to beat Apple’s Beats offering to market. Time will tell if they’re right.

  5. airmanchairman - 9 years ago

    The wealthy artistes are the ones with the profile and the influence, and ergo, the ones with a voice.

    Fabulously wealthy or not, their share of the revenue generated by their “signal” on blank CD or empty download or streaming bandwidth is what creates the value, hence the wealth, and their share of it (ALL ARTISTES) is measly, in the high single or low double percentages, compared to, say, mobile app developers.

    This is the feudal way of life for the artiste aye unto the early days of the gramophone – 70 years of serfdom at the hands of a Payola-grafting syndicate of an industry that has seen virtually zero reform for all that time.

    Maybe, just maybe, Apple can pick up (or throw down) the gauntlet and disrupt this cosy slave plantation that has existed well beyond its shelf life. Get to it, Jigga…

  6. Jason Reever - 9 years ago

    I see that everyone here is saying that Tidal just “jumped in at the last minute”. Actually it’s been around for a while, and is part of the successful WIMP service in Europe. I started listening when it was available, which was about a year ago. So I understand if no one has heard about it, and it still might not succeed, but it has been around for a while…

    It does have lots of variety, and sounds great! I love the service. I switched because they are higher fidelity than Spotify.

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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