After 1 year, Tidal reaches 3M paid subscribers, well behind Apple Music's 11M
Subscription music streaming service Tidal announced Tuesday that it has 3 million paid subscribers who signed on in its first year of availability, a number that lags behind the likes of Apple Music and Spotify.
Apple Music, meanwhile, reached the 12 million member mark in January, just six months after it debuted. It took just a month for Apple to add another million, announcing it had reached the 11 million mark in February.
Spotify, meanwhile, said it had nearly 30 million subscribers as of February. While different tiers and plans are available, all three generally offer the same $10-per-month basic plans for unlimited streaming.
In announcing its subscriber count on Tuesday, Tidal boasted of its exclusive content debuts, including "Formation" by Beyonce, "The Life of Pablo" by Kanye West and "ANTI" by Rihanna. The service also includes exclusive video content, such as West's "Yeezy Season 3" fashion show, which was viewed by more than 23 million people.
While Tidal lags behind Apple Music and Spotify, Tuesday's announcement does suggest that subscriber growth is at least accelerating -- the service held a Jay-Z concert last October to celebrate its one-millionth paid subscriber.
Though it originally launched in October 2014, Tidal was later bought by Jay-Z and relaunched in March 2015, with part of its new mission statement being that the service would be artist-friendly and pay higher royalties than its competitors.
In a standout from its competitors, Tidal offers a unique $20 tier with lossless audio. Another distinguishing aspect is that the service pays higher royalties than its competitors, making it more artist-friendly.
Apple Music, meanwhile, reached the 12 million member mark in January, just six months after it debuted. It took just a month for Apple to add another million, announcing it had reached the 11 million mark in February.
Spotify, meanwhile, said it had nearly 30 million subscribers as of February. While different tiers and plans are available, all three generally offer the same $10-per-month basic plans for unlimited streaming.
In announcing its subscriber count on Tuesday, Tidal boasted of its exclusive content debuts, including "Formation" by Beyonce, "The Life of Pablo" by Kanye West and "ANTI" by Rihanna. The service also includes exclusive video content, such as West's "Yeezy Season 3" fashion show, which was viewed by more than 23 million people.
While Tidal lags behind Apple Music and Spotify, Tuesday's announcement does suggest that subscriber growth is at least accelerating -- the service held a Jay-Z concert last October to celebrate its one-millionth paid subscriber.
Though it originally launched in October 2014, Tidal was later bought by Jay-Z and relaunched in March 2015, with part of its new mission statement being that the service would be artist-friendly and pay higher royalties than its competitors.
In a standout from its competitors, Tidal offers a unique $20 tier with lossless audio. Another distinguishing aspect is that the service pays higher royalties than its competitors, making it more artist-friendly.
Comments
i find it interesting that the reported number is "3 million signed on" and not just "3 million paid users". This leaves open the door for a hypothetical "x amount cancelled" while still being truthful about the number of signups.
Funny how numbers like this get accepted without any critical analysis.
What does 250 million even mean? 250 million complete albums? 250 million songs?
I wouldn't doubt the preparation methods for take out or delivery for food that employees order will someday be scrutinized and apple pressured to investigate, correct and improve those vendors to meet some standard of carbon neutral sourcing. /s
---
With Apple Music you can Add any song to your library. Yes, you'll lose those songs if you end your subscription, but let's do the math. You could create a music library of many thousands of songs, create your own playlists against them, and continually add, update and delete from that library. It's all 'rented' music that requires you continue to pay Apple's subscription fees, but how many songs would it take before you'd basically cover a lifetime subscription to Apple Music. Let's say you've got 40 years left during which you'll want to listen to music on your terms. At $120/year, 40 years of Apple Music will cost you about $5k. At $1.29/song, that comes to less than 4000 songs. And that's a static, unchanging library of 4000 songs. With Apple Music you can have 4000 songs, or 6000, or 20,000 if you like, all organized into playlists, and as new music comes along, or your tastes change, you can keep that collection fresh. So if you want to consume music the way we've been doing so before Apple Music came along, you can still do that, for a lifetime cost that comes in a lot cheaper taking advantage of the subscription rental model versus the buy and own model. Plus, you pay over 40 years to have that 6000, or 20,000, song library right out the gate. Always pay with tomorrow's dollars if possible and if not penalized for doing so. Apple's got your back.
I'm guessing it's their sneaky way of saving money. I bet most subscribers THINK they hear a difference when Hifi isn't even on.
12 + 1 = 11?
Editor!
It tells you right next to playback controls what it's playing at. It's not going to default to HIFI on your phone because it uses a high amount of data. It's the exact same setup for every music service including Spotify.
Indeed, it is funny how numbers that people want to see get accepted without any critical analysis. See above.