Apple Music rival Tidal may only have enough cash to run six months
Tidal, the on-demand music service owned by rapper and businessman Jay-Z, could have as little as six months' worth of cash on hand, according to reports.
This is despite Sprint taking a 33 percent stake in the company in January in a deal worth $200 million, noted Norway's Dagens Naeringsliv, cited by Engadget. A Tidal document reportedly said the investment would give the service "sufficient working capital for the next 12-18 months."
The company has denied any suggestions of an impending collapse, and even said it expects to turn a profit by the middle of 2018. Its main competition -- Spotify -- has likewise struggled with profitability, but is also the world's most popular on-demand service and pumping much of its revenue back into growth.
"We have experienced negative stories about Tidal since its inception and we have done nothing but grow the business each year," a Tidal spokesperson told Engadget.
While functionally similar to Spotify and Apple Music, Tidal does offer a "HiFi" tier with lossless audio, and exclusives from artists like Jay-Z and Beyonce. It has also touted itself as paying artists higher royalties, which could help explain its financial difficulties.
Its greater problem however has been attracting subscribers in the face of intense competition. Dagens Naeringsliv has previously accused the company of lying about subscriber numbers, for instance saying that while Tidal publicly claimed 3 million subscribers in March 2016, internal reporting pegged the number at 1.2 million, and payments to record labels mentioned just 850,000. In September, Apple Music was announced as topping 30 million subscribers.
This is despite Sprint taking a 33 percent stake in the company in January in a deal worth $200 million, noted Norway's Dagens Naeringsliv, cited by Engadget. A Tidal document reportedly said the investment would give the service "sufficient working capital for the next 12-18 months."
The company has denied any suggestions of an impending collapse, and even said it expects to turn a profit by the middle of 2018. Its main competition -- Spotify -- has likewise struggled with profitability, but is also the world's most popular on-demand service and pumping much of its revenue back into growth.
"We have experienced negative stories about Tidal since its inception and we have done nothing but grow the business each year," a Tidal spokesperson told Engadget.
While functionally similar to Spotify and Apple Music, Tidal does offer a "HiFi" tier with lossless audio, and exclusives from artists like Jay-Z and Beyonce. It has also touted itself as paying artists higher royalties, which could help explain its financial difficulties.
Its greater problem however has been attracting subscribers in the face of intense competition. Dagens Naeringsliv has previously accused the company of lying about subscriber numbers, for instance saying that while Tidal publicly claimed 3 million subscribers in March 2016, internal reporting pegged the number at 1.2 million, and payments to record labels mentioned just 850,000. In September, Apple Music was announced as topping 30 million subscribers.
Comments
I remember when Kanye tried to “bully” Tim into purchasing this service, by a series of nasty tweets.
I just wish Sprint hadn’t got fleeced into purchasing this turd; giving the pompous investors actually a good return at their shareholder’s expense.
I have a feeling Spotify won't be able to sustain their business for much longer. I see an acquisition or something else soon.
I think Tidal makes a mistake by not offering a free, ad supported tier - like Spotify. I've been using Spotify free for a few years and I am now very used to their UI and way things work. If I ever step up to subscribing to something, I'll most likely go with Spotify because I'm familiar with it, and I'm pretty happy with how it works.
I don't know anything about Tidal and so I certainly wouldn't miss the service if it went away. It's unfortunate but there are always some companies that are bound to fail. With such a small number of subscribers it likely won't have the staying power to survive. An acquisition of the company is likely its best bet.
People like you that don't switch to paid is Spotify's bane cause ads are not even close to covering their meager cost of licensing (yes it is that low).
I can't see how Spotify can survive forever. I think they're basically funded from investors and its only a matter of time before they (the inventors) realize they're not going to get a good return on their investment, if they even get one. Unless...somehow Spotify can create something to offset their costs and losses. Apple can afford to lose money on Apple Music if it is indeed losing money as they have other products and services to more than make up for those losses. And, Apple can use Apple Music as a selling point for their other products. Spotify doesn't have this position as it stands now. Its a shame too because I do think Spotify does things better than Apple Music and Apple needs competition. Everyone needs constant competition, even Apple.
iPhones and iPads can be used for critical listening though that varies among their products due to different DACs used over time. Macs also vary in output quality, but that can be remedied to varying degrees with an external DAC. Good speakers are a must, and an area of great subjectivity and personal bias/preference.
A 25Hz sub is only part of the equation of actual fidelity is concerned, and can't replace a pair of decent bookshelf speakers; it can only augment them. And it's not where I'd start to improve my listening experience. But I think I know what you meant. A quiet listening environment is a must, whether achieved through a room or ear- or headphones that provide isolation (passive over active). But to a large percentage of that 90%, more bass is the only metric of 'fidelity' to be considered.
Again, that's not the meat of Apple's market. So a business model that provides high-end only music files to a niche market is on thin ice to start. I'm not attracted to Tidal, or any subscription based model of any medium, so I wouldn't/won't miss them if/when they go.
There are people who appreciate and people who think they can appreciate something more than 256 and 320kps MP3s. Just not enough, apparently, to sustain a music market aimed them.
Pump it.
tidal doesn’t make it easy to determine whether something is MQA or not. You have to dig into the menu to find out.
and without the special D/A for MQA, it definitely sounds worse than a CD, much less a 24/96.
But all that aside, I do enjoy having a streaming service like Tidal that can at least deliver lossless CD quality music. I use it to explore music before I commit to buying it (like Ranky Tanky for example). I find that I listen to more new music this way -- once you've paid for the month you might as well explore, right? There's a lot of hate for Tidal in this thread but if it goes under I'll be sad.
There is a lot of imagination going on in the high end community. The placebo effect, confirmation bias and other psychological factors are in play, but they won’t admit it. Go to any demonstration of different Rez formats, and you notice that they always tell you the Rez you’re listening to before they play it. That’s because the presenters know it’s almost impossible to hear the differences, so they let you know what to think first.
anyway, different rez’s are mastered differently, and those mastering differences are almost entirely what we’re hearing. I was a partner in a professional audio manufacturing company some time ago, and designed equipment. Because of that I was involved in recording for the Boston Symphany and London Records, among others. I’m pretty familiar with how things are done. Most hi Rez recordings are brought into the post studio and brought down to 24/48 to do the work. That’s because almost all professional equipment is still 24/48, because, behind closed doors, almost no one in the industry, except for a few hi end fanatics in the industry, believes that anything higher matters.
so, often, when you buy a download that touted as being 24/96, or 24/192, while it may have been recorded that way, it’s often really 24/48, because once that data is thrown away, you can’t get it back.