Things have been looking pretty bleak for Jay Z‘s streaming service Tidal, which was set up to pay artists a fair rate for streaming their music, since it’s star studded launch in March. Less than a month after launching, the app had dropped out of the top 700 iTunes chart and Kanye did a mass tweet-delete of all the times he had mentioned the service, but the Spotify rival is now facing potentially its most damaging – not to mention embarrassing – issue yet: losing Beyoncé.
In order to stream music, Tidal has agreements with the record labels the artists are signed to. A lot of the artists on Jay Z’s Roc Nation have their music distributed by Universal, and so Tidal made a deal with them pretty quickly. Warner held out a little longer, but they also now have an arrangement. However, no deal has yet been reached between Tidal and Sony, who are demanding large advances for their big-name artists, including Tidal co-owners Beyoncé and Daft Punk, as well as Usher, Alicia Keys, Calvin Harris, Carly Rae Jepsen and many, many more. If no deal is reached, all Sony artists, including Beyoncé, would have to be removed from Tidal.
She may be one of the biggest artists in the world, but the rights issue has highlighted just how much power record labels have over even the Beyoncés of the music world. Speaking to Bloomberg Business, Peter Mensch, co-founder of Q Prime, who manage the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica, said, “I’m pretty sure most of the artists that were at the [Tidal launch] press conference don’t control their own streaming rights”. For Beyoncé, it’s going to be Hard To Say Goodbye.