Lily Allen Speaks About Tıdal

[Whispering 18,865]

​you still don't have to pay for it though to listen to a song? That's the literal definition for free.

It's not free. The advertisers are paying for the music you are listening to. Same concept with radio or network TV. The commercials in between the music or during the shows are paying for the music or TV shows you are watching.

[Whispering 18,865]

"I don't buy 12 albums a year."

I buy more than 12 albums a year and I'm a basic college student   She, who is considering herself a major English pop act, doesn't buy 12 albums a year? How does she expect people to buy her own album when she's degrading people who buy multiple albums a year?

She's not degrading them. She's simply stating that she doesn't buy that many albums a year. There are millions of music listeners out there who are the same. I only buy a few albums a year, but I have a ton of older albums that I also listen to. 

Some people listen to CDs in their car, some rely on strictly radio and some pay for Satellite radio. It all comes down to individual wants and needs and what those individuals are willing to pay for. 

[uo111 5,201]

​You're delusional if you think a plastic samsung phone costs the same to make as an aluminium iPhone. 

Soda cans are made out of aluminum  

 

No one complaining about the price of 20 dollars a month is buying a new iphone every year. People who buy new phones every year are stupid. People who would pay 20 dollars a month to listen to music that would be free otherwise are also dumb.

If artists want their music on it, who cares? They put their music on itunes too and no one accuse them of "selling out." But it's still dumb. Even if you just want to listen to top 40 songs like a mindless robot it would be cheaper to buy the 100 or so songs that end up in the top 40 throughtout the year than get tidal. 

[Carlitos 99]

Lily is right, spill the tea mama  

[Jed 7,716]

 She is absolutely right on the money with this. Instead of joining some exclusive service to make more money band together with all artists, rich or not, until spotify gives back more to the artists or becomes a paid service only.

[craig 680]

Lily is spot on. Some experts did an a--lysis and suggested that the average amount that fans spend on music in the industry heyday was around $50-60, and suggested a successful streaming service couldn't go above that per year.

I spend $120 a year on Music - but only because for that I can get 24-30 used albums at The Beat Goes On and zovertocks (amazon merchant). 

[brownie 5]

PROBLEMS WITH TIDAL:

1) The "it's lossless quality!!" thing they keep raving about is pointless, as most people paying for it don't even have the right earbuds/speakers to even play their music in true lossless quality.

2) They keep talking about how a main focus IS the lossless audio, and yet they offer a "standard" price point that ISN'T lossless quality. Tidal is advertising lossless audio for 10$...yet to get the lossless audio you need the 20$ a month subscription. That's 240$ a year.

3) What most people don't know is that you can rip any physical album you have onto your itunes (perfectly legal!) in LOSSLESS QUALITY!! Tidal is doing nothing new here. You can buy ARTPOP's CD and put the lossless files onto your iTunes for no added charge. You can physical copies of Rebel Heart, Froot, Ultraviolence, etc, and do the same.

Do you buy LESS than 240$ a year in albums? If YES, then Tidal isn't worth it--you can get the same music, same quality, for cheaper--and get the physical albums too! Every physical album can be ripped onto your itunes in LOSSLESS QUALITY. That's better than mp3s and mp4s!

As of now, Tidal is just an overpriced subscription with most of the money going into the pockets of artists who don't even need it.

[Ferrer Zorola 3,966]

Lily Allen is rich so why does she care.

Because her fans aren't, isn't it obvious? 

[Bowie 4]

I completely agree with Lily's points. The whole idea of "Tidal for all" is a ridiculous oxymoron, and just another marketing ploy. I can't see Tidal being particularly popular if the only promotion planned is celebrity endorsements, nor if the price remains extortionately high as it is now.

[monketsharona 44,814]

 

Tbqh...it should be more for indie/underground artists who are struggling to get their music heard and can start building up their popularity, fans, and money and hope to become bigger in the industry. NOT having already well established A list people asking for more money

​This is exactly my point

They want indie artists to win more money, ok so just propose those services to concerned people.

When I see Beyoncé, Jay Z, Madonna an Rihanna showing off there to sign a contact all I see is dollar sign in their eyes.

Didn't Rihanna say in one of her songs : 'All I see is sign, all I see is dollar sign. Money on my mind, money, money on my mind' ? 

[Supersonic 49,376]

It's not free. The advertisers are paying for the music you are listening to. Same concept with radio or network TV. The commercials in between the music or during the shows are paying for the music or TV shows you are watching.

​But you as a consumer don't have to pay for it. It's free. Period. You know what they call tv stations that are broadly available without extra cost and have commercials on it? Free-to-air.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-air

You have a very strange definition of free, appearently nothing ever is free as long as it has an ad on it. I guess Facebook is free as well because it has advertisments.

[Sam Dey 1,847]

THANKS LILLY 

[Haroon 49,685]

PROBLEMS WITH TIDAL:

1) The "it's lossless quality!!" thing they keep raving about is pointless, as most people paying for it don't even have the right earbuds/speakers to even play their music in true lossless quality.

2) They keep talking about how a main focus IS the lossless audio, and yet they offer a "standard" price point that ISN'T lossless quality. Tidal is advertising lossless audio for 10$...yet to get the lossless audio you need the 20$ a month subscription. That's 240$ a year.

3) What most people don't know is that you can rip any physical album you have onto your itunes (perfectly legal!) in LOSSLESS QUALITY!! Tidal is doing nothing new here. You can buy ARTPOP's CD and put the lossless files onto your iTunes for no added charge. You can physical copies of Rebel Heart, Froot, Ultraviolence, etc, and do the same.

Do you buy LESS than 240$ a year in albums? If YES, then Tidal isn't worth it--you can get the same music, same quality, for cheaper--and get the physical albums too! Every physical album can be ripped onto your itunes in LOSSLESS QUALITY. That's better than mp3s and mp4s!

As of now, Tidal is just an overpriced subscription with most of the money going into the pockets of artists who don't even need it.

​But 1) isn't a problem with Tidal, it's a problem with the people who'll pay for it without having the right equipment to take advantage of what it offers  

Like you said, if a person spends less than $240 a year on music then Tidal isn't for them  It's not overpriced for the people who spend more than $240 a year on music as they'll be saving money by getting Tidal.

I really don't understand the people saying it's too expensive  If it doesn't work for the amount of music you use then obviously you'll be making a loss instead of benefiting financially from it  Therefore you shouldn't be subscribing in the first place and would be better off using an alternative that fits your requirements for the cheapest price  

[SweetEscape 654]

Expose them, Queen!  

​ 

[Raikov 183]

People keep saying that this will help indie artists (somehow), but I've yet to see any indie acts actually talking about how this Tidal thing would benefit them. And I mean indie acts who make a living off their music, not Bobby Nobody who makes music as a hobby (I'm Bobby Nobody so don't be pressed :P). It seems that "this will help indie artists!" is more a token argument people throw around to take the focus off the fact that only rich, major label artists are promoting this (and moreover, promoting it as a "revolution" - it's literally more expensive Spotify, lol).

Honestly, services like Bandcamp are probably going to help indie acts much more than something like Tidal, since Bandcamp allows you to sell "directly to the fan" without needing a label to distribute it (and as major artists have shown, labels take up a LOT of the money). Bandcamp also lets you download music in lossless quality at no extra price.

I do think competition is good. Nevertheless, this whole Tidal thing actually illustrates why I won't subscribe to any streaming service - the artists I like could just leave any day. I listened to Taylor Swift, Kanye West, and Madonna through Spotify and where are they now?  I wanted to buy a subscription to Spotify because I like the service, the selection of music, and I'd like to help the model become more sustainable, but if artists are going to be Spotify or Tidal-exclusive, I'm not going to bother subscribing to anything. I'll keep being the dinosaur I am and buying CDs. If you spend $240 a year on CDs it might even be a better deal since you own those CDs whereas you don't own anything from streaming services. You stop paying, you lose the music online and offline. Call me paranoid, but that's not a deal I'm interested in.

I feel like this whole "the artist is not being paid fairly" thing isn't really caused by Spotify. Spotify may be exacerbating an existing issue, but a more expensive Spotify isn't going to fix the problem. This 2010 article says that artists get $23 for every $1000 of music they sell - .023% (If Taylor got $500,000 of $2m from Spotify, that's 25%  ). This article has anecdotes from Courtney Love and others on how a record can sell millions and the artist can make nothing. Spotify is being made out to be the bad guys who take all the money and leave the poor labels and artists in the dust, but the labels have been getting most of the money long before Spotify came into the picture (and they still get most of the money with Spotify in the picture). If artists want Spotify to pay them more, it's basically so they'll take a larger proportion of whatever's left after the label takes their share. The system is inherently flawed and Tidal won't fix it. I think at best it'll pacify major label artists who are already profiting from this system, but this won't make a significant difference to less popular artists signed to labels, and never mind indie artists.

I'd like to point out I'm no expert in the music industry - just like most of you, I just read what I can about it. If anyone has any comments to make, I'd like to hear it actually. It's clear there's some kind of problem with the music industry, but there's a disconnect over what the problem is (piracy? streaming? music too expensive? music sucks?) and how to fix it. The one thing I'm sure about is that Tidal is no revolution.

FINALLY: If you think $120 or $240 a year for music is "not expensive," please realize not everybody is in whatever economic situation you're in. I certainly don't buy $600 phones every year - I don't even have new phones every year; I keep my old one until I don't have a choice but to get a new one. Subscription services also pile on - $10 a month for music might not be so bad... until you also have to pay $5 for an image hosting service, $5 for cloud service, $9 for Netflix... Subscription charges pile on very quickly, and nowadays more and more services are moving to subscription based models as opposed to the buy-it-once model (see: Adobe). Most people I know who don't have a lot of money but want to listen to music legally just use YouTube (which nobody, Taylor Swift included, complains about even though it's free and ad-supported, just like Spotify) or Spotify; they may buy music if they really like it.

Pirating is always an option, regardless of your stance on its morality, and it's one that you must take into account when pricing things. You can scream about how bad piracy is until your face turns blue, but that won't stop anybody pirating. You can come up with arcane restrictions on how to use the media you buy (DRM), but that'll just annoy people who buy things legally and provide a challenge for pirates, who'll crack it if only out of sheer spite. Remember how introducing an easy way to buy music online slowed piracy rates? People actually want to buy the music they like! The thing is, if they consider it too expensive, they'll go back to pirating because it's easy, it's free, and unless you're that unlucky person they make an example of, there are no consequences. People returning to piracy is a real threat, like it or not.