Music piracy fears

Despite the endorsement, some musicians have claimed that the expense of Tidal subscription could tempt listeners “back to pirate sites.”

Last week, British pop singer, Lily Allen, went on a Twitter storm about how the premium service would increase music piracy, which she said the cheaper Spotify was helping subdue—its most expensive “premium” service costs subscribers £9.99 ($14.84) per month.

On March 30th, Allen tweeted that whilst she loved Jay Z, Tidal is “expensive compared to other perfectly good streaming services” and that he’d taken the biggest artists and “made them exclusive to TIDAL (am i right in thinking this?), people are going to swarm back to Pirate sites in droves… sending traffic to torrent sites.”

“Up and coming (not yet millionaires) artists are going to suffer as a result,” she added in a later tweet.

After tweeting, the singer was inundated by comments, with some Twitter users agreeing that the service was too expensive.

One user called Erica Burton replied: “I don’t think jay z knows how much stuff costs. Like if I asked him for money to buy a banana he would give me $40.”

Jay Z faced a mixed response when unleashed the hashtag #TIDALforALL on Twitter to promote the service on March 30th, which offers over 25 million songs and 75,000 videos to those “who care about quality.”

Co-founder of Simple as Milk, a “user-experience agency”, James Seymour-Lock tweeted that it was “Ironic that these artists moan about pirated music then rip off @Spotify’s hard work.”

Twitter user Adam Bennett tweeted: “Tidal is way too expensive! $240 a year is absolutely ridiculous – it just makes the already rich even richer.”