TIDAL continues to make headlines, but recently the tide has turned against the service that is perceived as elitist by many. With its star-studded launch, headed by new owner Jay Z, who was flanked by a who's who list of the biggest stars in music including Beyoncé, Usher, Kanye West, Daft Punk, Jack White and others, the service has amassed considerable momentum. According to a BGR report, new data shows that it has lost a lot of that in one key category — downloads. The app, which briefly cracked the top 20 of the Apple app store two weeks ago, now languishes out of the top 750.
What is even more worrisome about this news is that all of the attention that TIDAL has gotten and the perceived changes it plans to bring to the industry has only increased the exposure for its rivals Pandora and Spotify, which have shot up to spots No. 3 and No. 4 respectively on the U.S. iPhone revenue chart. This is the first time that both streaming services have cracked the top four at the same time and it has put Spotify back in the iPad Top 40 download chart for the first time since November 2014.
As if things couldn't get any worse, Beats Music has seen a jump in sales, despite being put on the shelf for a major overhaul by Apple, cracking the top 20 revenue chart.
This two statistics do not tell the full story with TIDAL. We do not know how the user base is growing, if at all, yet if the company felt the need to make a change at CEO less than a month after the relaunch, things are not going as planned.
TIDAL's problems come just as Pandora and Spotify seem to be growing larger and stronger with each passing month. Spotify is reportedly raising new funding that will give the Swedish streaming giant a valuation of $8.4 billion. TIDAL seems to be helping its rivals because such well-established brands will only benefit from the negative publicity.
TIDAL must now prove that it can work for all musicians and lose the elitist image and find a way to do this without helping their rivals.
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