Lily Allen doesn’t like TIDAL. Marina and the Diamonds doesn’t like TIDAL. Apparently Mumford and Sons don’t like TIDAL either. From a Daily Beast interview…
We wouldn’t have joined it anyway, even if they had asked. We don’t want to be tribal,” says frontman Marcus Mumford.
“I think smaller bands should get paid more for it, too. Bigger bands have other ways of making money, so I don’t think you can complain. A band of our size shouldn’t be complaining. And when they say it’s artist-owned, it’s owned by those rich, wealthy artists.”
“And when they say it’s artist-owned, it’s owned by those rich, wealthy artists”
And that’s the bottom line.
Now this couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Spotify’s promotion of the band and their hit record Babel, could it?
https://play.spotify.com/artist/3gd8FJtBJtkRxdfbTu19U2?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open
Now I don’t know what Jay Zs worth, but last I heard Ek was ‘valued’ at $400. million. Not bad for a kid from uTorrent. I still have a hard time when Nina’s generation gets so upset by wealthy rock stars and not corporate geeks. I mean these tech guys can be worth obscene amounts of money.
i think my generation has a problem with using the word “geek” as an insult. try again!
Who said he meant it as an insult? Many of the biggest names in tech refer to themselves as geeks. Either way, I agree with his point. Being a “rich” musician is somehow a sin that I will never understand. Having a pot to piss in is not a crime.
You’re confused. Only crocs-wearing, gender-biased tech dorks can be filthy rich. Musicians must remain the starving serfs they’re supposed to be.
If the tech guys were complaining, they’d get the same response. But they’re not. But that’s not even the point. Because the tech guys might as well not even exist to the average consumer, they only interface with the technology. If the tech guys WERE complaining, no one would even hear them. So it’s not the “tech vs musician” face-off that way that some lamebrain commenters are framing it. That’s a delusion.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Beyonce is worth $450 million & Jay Z is worth $560 million. That’s over a billion dollars combined.
Supposedly the ’90s were so prosperous for musicians, but Bobby Brown & Whitney Houston were never worth anything near a billion dollars. And Whitney had one of the biggest hit movies of the decade.
That’s the disconnect here… it’s that there’s SO MUCH MORE MONEY now in being a celebrity, WAY more than there used to be. And yet they’re acting like it’s so hard out there on the mean streets of Beverly Hills. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche, as it were.
And then you have people saying absolutely stupid shit like, “Having a pot to piss in is not a crime.” How completely out of touch.
I don’t care one bit for Mumford & Sons’ music, but Mumford is right as rain here. Absolutely right as rain.
I really wanted to be excited about Tidal, too, but this relaunch has been a shit show since day one.
You definitely are a freehadist and delusional. You’ve swallowed the pirate rhetoric or just spew it out like random garbage. What a lame claim to even compare the obscene wealth of the tech sector compared to working artists.
1) “Freehadist” is a very loaded word, & anyone using it obviously isn’t capable of discussing these issues rationally.
2) I never said anything should be free. I’m objecting to superstar artists, who are fewer but wealthier than the superstar artists of the ’90s, acting as if they’re being slighted, & using the plight of the working artist to bolster their own bank accounts. The reality is that their ubiquity, brought on largely & ironically by free services like YouTube & Spotify, perhaps even piracy, has given them a platform that corporations like Samsung & Pepsi pay $$$$$$$$$ for access to. I have no pity for Beyonce. I have no pity for Jay Z. I have no pity for Madonna. They’ve found ways to cash in. This is not “freehadism,” this is realism. This is rationally analyzing the marketplace. You should try it sometime.
3) You’re the lamebrain commenter to which I was referring (or at least one of them). You’re projecting this “technologists vs artists” thing onto the consumer, & you’re wrong to do so. Consumers aren’t defending the technologist, if anything they’re defending the technology. Get with the program. Consumers don’t even know who Daniel Ek is except for maybe some guy that Taylor Swift might’ve mentioned one time in some really boring article where she tried to convince her fans that she was removing her catalog from Spotify out of respect for them. lololol. So you’re presenting a false dichotomy here. (If someone is criticizing a superstar artist, they are therefore defending a technologist… this is a logical fallacy).
4) I never compared “working artists” to “the tech sector” because that’s not even a comparison you can make. For one, all of the artists who own Tidal are the ones who are benefitting the MOST from the tech industry. Samsung has given millions to Jay Z. Apple has given millions to U2. Silicon valley & wall street investors are funneling money into the industry at a rate of 70 cents per dollar through companies like Spotify, & an inordinate percentage of this money goes to these artists’ labels. What’s more… Jay Z, Beyonce, Madonna, etc now ARE “the tech sector.” How does that make you feel?
5) I would just like to reiterate point #2… these hugely wealthy superstar artists are using the plight of the middle class artists to cast themselves as downtrodden in order to fill their own already-full coffers at the EXPENSE of these same middle class artists. This is what I meant by “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” clearly. I’m actually being purposely naive there… I’ve got to assume that Jay Z & Beyonce & Madonna & the rest of the bunch KNOW they’re double dipping, & just don’t give a shit. Marcus sees through the smoke & mirrors.
6) I can sign you up for some free online reading comprehension classes if you’d like. What’s your e-mail?
7) I’ve always been a vocal critic… I may take it easier on Marcus & his sons from now on. Maybe he’s a reasonable dude, after all.
“these hugely wealthy superstar artists are using the plight of the middle class artists to cast themselves as downtrodden in order to fill their own already-full coffers at the EXPENSE of these same middle class artists”
I never said you weren’t complicated. Now you sound like a Marxist. Everyone that has money and is successful has bad intentions? Some yes. Everyone no. Dude, you want to talk exploitation, you want to talk Spotify.
Spotify is running a business that consumers love & is putting 70% of revenue in the pockets of rights holders.
What have you done for anyone lately?
I don’t think that Tidal is going to take off. But any & all success that they have is going to come ON THE BACK OF SPOTIFY’S FREE TIER. Spotify’s free tier is a CRUCIAL stepping stone for consumers on the way to premium streaming. It’s why they have been successful, & Rhapsody & Rdio & Beats haven’t been. And it’s why Tidal won’t be. Is it tenable in the longterm? Probably not. Is it essential in introducing this NEW FORMAT to the mainstream public? Absolutely.
So if that’s your justification for claiming Daniel Ek has bad intentions, you might wanna try again.
you sound like a Marxist
Ayy lamo
jw, you’re losing your time trying to explain logical things to grandpa FarePlay… He has totally lost touch with the world out there. Making reference to communism in 2015, I mean, WTF ?
So, I look at this way, it may be a bit simple to you , but so what. The artists, ALL of them (billionaires or not), have a point. The music is way undervalued. Nobody needs to be ashamed to say that, whether you agree with them or not. It’s not about “tech vs. artists” and nobody ever said that. It’s about a bad business model.
I don’t believe Tidal to be the answer, nor Spotify, because I think the business model is not sustainable. Being a celebrity is a lucrative business, as it always has been. That has nothing to do with what music should be valued at, since it is a separate line of business. The fact that they have the good fortune to have been lucky enough to be a celebrity, does not make them have any less right to bring attention to the fact music is undervalued. That is a red herring if there ever was one.
It’s a perception issue. For the average listener, Jay Z and co. are perceived like rich people who only want to get more money. That’s not something new. If you speak with people outside the music business (= 99% of people on earth), most will tell you that those stars don’t deserve to make more money because they’re already rich (= we have all the right to stream / download their music for free). For them, Jay Z, Beyonce or Madonna are in the exact same boat than Apple, Spotify or Samsung execs. That’s why it’s really difficult to make Tidal looks like “the good” guy here.
Mumford & Sons Want…free publicity.
Streaming sites are the new labels?
zippity do da
We are observing the development of MEGA trend!
Average music fan will buy sub for Spotify to get Mumford, TIDAL for JayZ and dead-Beats to get Taylor Swift!
Exciting future and prosperity in front of us!
This is irony, right ?
Because, it’s already more than difficult to convert people to paid streaming, hoping that music fan will use more than 1 paid service is just total madness…
Be tribal.
When Tidal announced that one of it’s partners was Live Nation it has completly made me questions the whole model. Very surprized that artist are this gullable since so many people want a larger share of the pie do these artist have sound people in their teams.
I want nothing to do with Mumford and Sons either
But their new single is on Tidal too, so they apparently don’t really care that much.
Mumford and Sons = Who cares? They won’t impact Tidal or any other streaming service.
Exactly, there no proof that all these exclusives are going to grow the consumer data base of these streaming services yet, only consumption. The bigger question that needs to be addressed is how big is this space? Why is it assumed that we will ever reach the number of paid consumers these services assume? If Lefsetz is to be believed, Beats guaranteeing a 40M/month paid user to the labels is worst than any of this.
I think this is more what the Mumfords were talking about. They weren’t shitting on rich musicians, it’s about the principle of their net worth and their message being hard to swallow.
http://mic.com/articles/115350/in-one-quote-death-cab-for-cutie-s-frontman-gives-jay-z-s-tidal-a-perfect-middle-finger
Mumford & Sons, despite their utter forgettability, is correct in that Tidal fails to advance the interests of artists at any economic strata…but it isn’t because of the ownership matrix, or bath salts inspired price point.
They are correct because the service (as yet) fails to acknowledge the fatally broken value proposition of fans paying for music delivered in audio-only form.
Every dollar bet on mass marketing audio-only products and services is a dollar that would have generated more benefit if lit on fire for its fleeting warmth.
Music is SO over!
Looks like Lily Allen was right after all. Who’s going to spend 10 minutes figuring out which service and which tier within that service their desired music is on, when they can just have it downloaded (pirated) in less time?
The first sensible band.
Can you really even call people like Jay-Z, Madonna and Kanye artists anymore? They’re not exactly making music to show case their artistic talents anymore, they already did that, now they do it because they’re a business unto themselves and their names alone can generate cash. Hence: TIDAL. Its hard to call anyone an artist when you have 67 song writer credits not to mention you have all the best professionals in the business doing everything for you, all you’re doing is putting your face and name on it. I’m just saying times have changed, these days artists are making their own beats using daw’s and they have to learn how programs work while staying on top of every new tool that comes out, they have to study sound engineering, they write and do everything themselves, even promoting online all while producing from their parent’s basements. That’s a real artist. These old fools are a thing of the past. You put someone like Beyonce in a room with a bunch of equipment and she’s completely lost, all she has is a voice. That voice btw is tweaked to perfection in the studio and it seems like lip-synching has become the norm. Every production is a massive group effort for which a single person attempts to take sole credit for it claiming to be the biggest rockstar in the world… Meanwhile they’re not even making rock music lmao! You’re a pop star Kanye, it not even rap music. Pop music for 14 year old kids. Making songs celebrating yourself like some sort of God. Cookie cutter frauds mad because the visuals in their lame music videos didn’t get a VMA nod, visuals? Lmao… Did YOU direct the music video? Did YOU design the set? What exactly did YOU do? None of them do anything. TIDAL is a joke, actually its an insult. An insult to your intelligence. Its obvious all Jay-Z wants to do is get in on that Dr. Dre money, trying to get a fat check from a company like Apple. TIDAL was never meant to succeed, his whole scheme was to set up TIDAL to look like a viable threat so that they’ll buy him out as to rid themselves of the competition.