Criticism of Tidal by music artists is premature

Jay-Z’s purchase of Tidal’s music streaming service was announced with much hoopla last month as a number of big name music artists threw in their support claiming that Tidal would pay better streaming rates than other services such as Spotify.

Now a number of artists are criticizing the service saying that it will be a failure. Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie makes some reasonable criticisms for the way the launch was handled – a lack of specifics about the rates Tidal would pay and the focus on wealthy pop stars, rather than the independent artists who are struggling as a result of diminishing sales and low streaming rates.

However, I say let’s give Tidal a chance and support it. This is the first streaming service that is artist owned and will not be offering a free version. I think it is important that streaming music move to a subscription based model similar to what Netflix provides for film and television if we want the artists whose music we enjoy to be compensated for their work.