Since Jay-Z bought Tidal for a record $56 million early this year, the company has endured non-stop executive instability. Tidal’s management turnover has now become more extensive with Vania Schlogel’s departure.
This is the second major executive to step down from Tidal in the last six months, after interim CEO Peter Tonstad — who replaced fired CEO Andy Chen — resigned in June. Although Schlogel’s title was chief investment officer, she exerted significantly more influence over the company, and has been the public face of Tidal since its re-launch in March. This makes Schlogel’s resignation a major loss for the streaming service.
Tidal has been under harsh criticism and skepticism since it was re-launched, so with such drastic executive moves of key figures in the company like Schlogel and other company representatives that resigned, there is no wonder people are talking. Such bold moves, could slow down company growth, at what should be a crucial time for Tidal to be growing and keeping up with its competitors.
However, amongst all the change and despite these major executive shuffles, Tidal has experienced some success lately. In September, Jay Z announced the service had one million subscribers, which was celebrated with a charity event held in Brooklyn, NY. The jury is still out on whether this is enough to compete with its competitors.
To make matters worse, YouTube has just expanded its subscription-based Red with a music-focused app that eliminates ads and allows music to be played offline. Red is priced at $10 a month, which makes it difficult for Tidal to compete. Currently, Tidal’s subscription costs are high: $9.99 for standard streaming and $19.99 for high-quality audio streaming. Tidal does not offer a free tier outside of a limited preview.
As for the competition, YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify seem to be focusing their efforts on exclusive features and benefits. If Jay Z wants Tidal to compete, he’ll need a stable team of executives to drive new innovative ideas.
If, Jay Z wants Tidal to compete he needs to have a stable team of executives that are focused on driving the company forward with new innovative ideas to capture their audience.
Did, you go to one of those bizness schools where they accept a lot of money from billionaires to extol the virtues of our corporate overlords?
The brain drain is one thing, market realities of starting a service like this now is just crazy and the main thing.
Did he think his fame and personality would overcome apple, google and existing adoption of services.
A good reality check that will help him make smarter decisions going forward.
He’s got a unique product at a unique price point. For people in love with Tidal, “ apple, google and existing” services aren’t even under consideration.
It’s the job of the suits to make that love connection happen for more people. As long as the product is differentiated – and Tidal’s is – it’s possible. If Tidal just goes all LCD and offers 320kbps crap for $9.99, then yes, mere survival becomes a challenge.
The most innovative POSSIBILITY for all streamers is to convert to simple discovery based music stores.
If we add terrestrial and web Radio we will go over $100B before 2020.
Apple, YouTube, Spotify, Deezer, TIDAL and now Pandora are all on Ek’s music killing DOPE.
Subs and ads will never generate more than $20B for music industry – let’s STOP and re-START right NOW!
Hey. That boat is sinking, that is hy everyone is jumping ship. He has nothing that is truly “unique”. High res audio, and special access to video is not that important for the gen population.
I saw a camed video of the concert he gave to subs only.
My reaction… meh!
It’s the content that continues to go downhill. For starters no gapless steaming. What’s the point in hi fidelity if you have endure gaps in the middle of continuous compositions? Try listening to classical on Tidal. Or Pink Floyd. Sucks.
Worse they are losing content rights every day. Allman Bros tracks for example dropping like flies.
When Swedish owned, Tidal was a cool music lovers streaming service worth the extra $$. From the day of the buyout, sucks more and more.