Tidal's Point Break Jay Z’s music service has new apps, concert tickets, and a lot to prove By Micah Singleton

Jay Z called me. It was just after 3PM on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-May — right after I’d attended his B-Sides concert in New York, and about a week into researching his Tidal music service. A few minutes before Jay called, I got a call from someone at Roc Nation telling me he wanted to have a chat. And I… tried to reschedule. I told Jay Z’s people I couldn’t talk right now. And then hung up. What Jay Z didn’t know is that I was running late for a haircut. I had just come off a flight, and my hair was looking rough. It was time to make a life decision: talk to Jay Z — rap legend, musical icon, one half of the closest thing we have to an American Royal Family — and look busted, or get a fresh cut and risk passing up a conversation with Shawn Carter himself. You don’t know how fast you can find a contact in your phone until it really matters. Jay Z sounds just like you would expect Jay Z to sound I called Roc Nation back, asked them to ignore my initial display of insanity, and eventually found myself discussing Tidal with Jay Z. Jay Z sounds just like you would expect Jay Z to sound: relaxed, confident, and contemplative — his words don’t feel calculated, but they’re also not off the cuff. Then there’s his laugh — that infamous, full-throated laugh. When we touch on a topic he’s passionate about, like Tidal, he comes to life, expounding on the subject. Jay wouldn’t go on the record when we spoke, insisting that my story was about Tidal, not about him. And in a sense he’s right. This story is about Tidal: its rocky launch and its perhaps quixotic attempt at charting a new path in an industry undergoing massive change. But it’s also about Jay Z, one of music’s most entrepreneurial spirits, trying to resolve the inherent tension between technology and music. Tidal’s next attempt begins again today: Lil Wayne has signed onto the service and is releasing an exclusive new single called "Glory." Tomorrow, new desktop apps for Mac and Windows will arrive, along with a ticketing feature backed by TicketMaster that gives subscribers early and exclusive access to concert and music festival tickets. And there’s new pricing for college students starting next week: $4.99 for standard and $9.99 for the lossless Hi-Fi service. There’s no guarantee that anyone can run with Apple or YouTube, but after talking to a host of Tidal executives and employees, it’s clear Tidal plans to be as aggressive as possible as the next generation of music unfolds.

Vania Schlogel has been on a nonstop press tour for weeks. The senior executive of Tidal is eager to reshape the narrative around the company after its tumultuous launch. She admits Tidal’s rollout did not go as planned, and in interview after interview, she sells the streaming service as an alternative to established companies like Spotify and iTunes. Jay Z said Tidal would "change the course of history." If Jay Z pulled off a coup by getting 16 artists to sit down and agree to work together, his second biggest accomplishment around Tidal was getting Schlogel to be the company’s public face. A former principal with the private equity firm KKR and an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, Schlogel was a member the exploratory group Jay Z assembled last summer and has been leading the charge ever since. If Tidal has gained any ground in the last few weeks, it’s largely due to Schlogel schlepping across TV, print, and digital publications reiterating what Tidal should have said during its launch. Since Jay Z purchased Tidal back in March, the dominant narrative has been one of hubris. The company launched with a widely panned video featuring Jay Z saying Tidal would "change the course of history," while putting down "tech companies." "It’s about putting humanity back into a being an artist," Madonna followed up. "Not technology. Art." "I talked to a lot of people outside of the industry, and everyone was like, ‘What took so long?’" says Jay Z, punctuating the question with his hands. "Like this thing was the thing everyone wanted, and everyone feared. If these artists can sit in a room together, the game changes forever."

Six weeks later, the game has not been changed forever. And Tidal’s messy first impression — made worse by an even more bombastic press conference — continues to haunt the company. Forbes called Tidal a money grab by a collection of already rich artists; The New Republic argued that it was a sort of wealthy "worker cooperative," doomed to fail in part because, unlike other streaming services, it doesn’t offer a free music tier. Flavorwire pointed out that Tidal’s exclusives — like the music video for "Feeling Myself" featuring Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé — were quickly hitting YouTube and making subscriptions unnecessary. Just last week, Bloomberg called the service "a complete disaster," and speculated that Sony Music could deal the service the ultimate blow by pulling Beyoncé’s catalog. (Sony has since denied the rumor.) Six weeks later, the game has not yet been changed forever "For me personally I had this moment where I was a little down," says Schlogel. "It wasn’t about people saying negative things, it was around the misperception that was frustrating." Meanwhile, a new threat is fast approaching: Apple appears to be ready to launch a new streaming service of its own next week. From a distance, Apple and Tidal appear to be making similar moves: Apple acquired Beats (co-founded by fellow rapper Dr. Dre) last year, and multiple sources indicate Beats’ other co-founder Jimmy Iovine is lining up exclusive artist deals and eschewing free all-you-can-eat services in favor of paid subscriptions. The difference is that Apple already reinvented the music industry once and is the world’s most valuable company, with over $100 billion in the bank and the runaway success of the iPhone to fall back on. Tidal is, well, Tidal. And even if Tidal can hold serve against Apple, surveys say teenagers mostly listen to music for free on YouTube. This is definitely not going to be easy.

Tidal’s official headquarters and 100-person tech team are in Oslo, Norway, but the US operation is based out of the Times Square offices where Jay Z’s massively successful label / management / sports agency conglomerate Roc Nation makes its home. The tranquil, glass-encased setting boasts some of the best views in the city. Priceless Basquiat paintings line the walls. Employees are upbeat, either impervious or oblivious to the public backlash against their employer Tidal's share of the office is rapidly growing, expanding into the rest of the lofty space. Stepping out of the elevator, you wouldn’t know you’ve walked into a company most of the tech press has written off as doomed. Employees are upbeat, either impervious or oblivious to the public backlash against their employer. Over several weeks, I saw a steady stream of new Tidal employees every time I stopped by to visit: changing the game apparently requires quite a few people. Tidal as it currently exists began last summer, when Jay Z and his team sat down to assess the state of the music industry. "Naturally we saw that it’s trending toward streaming, away from ownership," says Schlogel. "That’s where we need to go, too, and that’s what we need to shape the future of." But streaming had issues: Spotify, the dominant streaming service, was under constant fire for paying artists slim returns on licensing rights, with blame constantly shifting to and from the labels. Jay Z, whose success in business is on par with his success in music, recognized an opportunity to establish a different sort of streaming service that paid artists fairly. ("Fairly," of course, means "more.") At first the group considered building an entirely new streaming service, says Schlogel, but time constraints came up. "If we did this pure DIY, our time to be able to actually step in and reach the subscriber was at least 12 months or something like that. So we felt like stepping into a company that was already running was the next step." So they went shopping.

In November, the team found Tidal, a streaming service launched by the Norwegian company Aspiro. Tidal was essentially a rebranded version of WiMP, a streaming service that’s been available in Europe since 2010. For $20 a month, Tidal offered CD-quality streaming, far surpassing the average quality of MP3 downloads and Spotify streaming. It had been well-received by the niche audiophile market, but for most mainstream consumers, it was easy to write off as just another streaming service chasing Spotify’s throne. There was a nice bonus of 75,000 music videos, but unless you were obsessed with premium audio quality, there was little reason to sign up for it. It was an unassuming product, but for Jay Z’s group, it was the perfect opportunity It was an unassuming product, but for Jay Z’s group, it was the perfect opportunity. WiMP had been successfully operating in Europe for years, had the infrastructure to handle growth, and didn’t need a redesign. "We were stepping into a relatively feature complete, mature product," says Schlogel. "They had a great team there, really good tech guys… almost immediately we knew." But good tech for tech’s sake isn’t really what Tidal cares about — part of the reason the company has struggled talking to the product-obsessed tech press. Like many in the media industry, Jay Z is frustrated by the enormous profits tech companies make against media consumption. "I feel like YouTube is the biggest culprit," he rapped during his B-Sides performance. "You bought nine iPhones and Steve Jobs is rich, Spotify’s $9 billion, they ain’t say shit." Tidal, by contrast, is supposed to be a streaming service for artists, by artists. In the early 2000s, music companies wanted a cut of every iPod sold; now the artists want a piece of every song streamed. The battle lines might be new, but the conflicts are familiar, and the players are learning to find their leverage. "We knew that just one artist alone can’t change an entire industry, or create a sustainable music economy," says Schlogel. "We knew before we went for Tidal that it was going to have to be a group of people." Using Jay Z’s connections, Tidal pulled in some of today’s top-earning artists, including Beyoncé, Kanye West, Madonna, Jack White, Jason Aldean, Nicki Minaj, Daft Punk, Alicia Keys, J. Cole, Rihanna, Usher, Arcade Fire, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Calvin Harris, and deadmau5. Each of them has taken an equal ownership stake in Tidal, rumored to have cost over a million dollars apiece. "The artists are equal owners," Schlogel says. "Jay’s provided funding to the company as basically a below-market interest rate loan." Jimmy Iovine has tried to hire artists away from Tidal, including Jay Z himself Other artists declined to buy in: music industry sources say Apple’s Jimmy Iovine has tried to hire artists away from Tidal, including Jay Z himself. (Jay Z rapped "Jimmy Iovine offered a safety net," at his B-Sides show.) Drake reportedly turned Tidal down at the last minute in favor of Apple, and Taylor Swift appears set to go with Iovine as well. In late January, Project Panther Bidco, a company owned by Jay Z, purchased Tidal for $56 million. Jay Z wouldn’t fully take control of the company until April 15th, but during the intervening four months, two events took place that created — and perhaps cemented — Tidal’s out-of-touch image. A week after the acquisition, Tidal’s 16 celebrity owners assembled for the first time at the Fig House in Los Angeles. Jay Z, Beyoncé, Madonna, Kanye West, Chris Martin, and others were there in person. Daft Punk showed up in full helmet. Alicia Keys, Usher, and Win Butler and Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire attended via Skype feeds projected onto a huge screen. Champagne glasses clinked. The video cameras were rolling, ultimately creating the widely criticized video that made the summit seem like a room full of rich musicians congratulating themselves on changing the industry for their own benefit with few specifics to back up their claims.