On Monday afternoon, Jay Z relaunched his recently purchased music streaming platform Tidal with a huge press conference. It was a really big to-do for the launch of a streaming service, and it was easy to get lost, so here are the main takeaways:

It was cool, but mostly contrived. Alicia Keys delivered a long, ornate speech about the new platform, but actually gave up little to no details about what it actually is, other than that it’s the first global music platform owned by artists, and that the program will offer curated playlists and higher quality audio than its competitors. She mostly explained music to us as though we’d never heard it before and claimed that this will be the silver bullet to fix the music industry. She name-dropped Nietzsche. It was really something.

Also, everyone you could possibly think of was there. In addition to Keys, Rihanna, Jason Aldean, Kanye West, Chris Martin, J. Cole, Daft Punk, Calvin Harris, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Deadmau5, Beyoncé, Usher, Win Butler and Régine Chassagne​, and Jack White were there, and they’re all co-owners. They all stepped up to sign this declaration of changing the music industry. It looked like the signing of the Bill of Rights.

The service is also available at two plans: a $9.99 per month option which gets you the standard quality, or $19.99 per month HiFi plan that gets you the highest quality, which is lossless audio.

Here’s why all of this is stupid.

1. This whole ‘high quality audio’ thing overestimates the average listener

For one thing, the average person that listens to music in the car on their commute or in their stock Apple earbuds cannot hear and does not care about the difference between 256 Kpbs (standard iTunes quality), 320 Kpbs (high quality) and 1411 Kpbs lossless or FLAC audio files (astronomically high quality).

The bulk of the target audience here buys vinyl albums to frame and hang on their walls, not to actually listen to on a record player.

2. The Tidal model doesn’t seem scalable

Spotify pretty much stiffs its artists and they still don’t make any money. Tidal’s business plan is different, but it’s hard to see how it’ll hold water.

In addition to partnerships with most major record labels, Tidal has so many co-owners because they were all offered a 3% stake in the company to secure exclusives. That’s all well and good, but it kind of ignores how things really work in the Internet era.

If you yank an artist’s music from one streaming service and make it exclusively available on a rival and more expensive streaming service, some people might pay for it, but others might decide it’s not worth the trouble, and others will probably find another and less expensive (read: free) way to get their hands on it.

Do you get it? I’m talking about piracy.

3. Why would anybody pay $20 for this?

We can make our own playlists. The only draw to Tidal is the higher quality audio, and it’s not even really that big of a draw.

That higher quality audio is only available at the $20 price point which is just ridiculous. That’s what a lot of us pay for Spotify and Netflix combined each month.

The only selling point outside of that is the bill of goods that this will somehow save music. And that’s really funny, because none of us really care about the streaming service we listen to the music on, so long as we can hear what we want, when we want, with the fewest number of interruptions possible.

So obviously I have my doubts. Tidal is supposed “evolve over time” which is code for “we’re still figuring this out” so maybe it’ll eventually find its feet. But it’s hard to understand why all of this money is going into what we listen to the music on, rather than actually using the money to make music, which is all we really wanted from jump street. Considering that, this all just seems…stupid.