Apple Music Competitor Tidal Allegedly Months Behind on Royalty Payments

[alexgowers]

The beginning of the end for tidal. Maybe their streaming capacity might get them bought last minute by someone but the real issue remains that streaming is hardly a viable business let alone for one that is actively falsifying figures.

I’m all for music artists being vested in music businesses. It’s great, but when you know how fake those stats are, they’re screwing everyone else on the platform by doing it.

The reality for most of these people is that they’re older stars who are past it and the temptation to cheat to stay relevant is too strong.

 

[chublet]

I'm surprised. There have been multiple post in the last year saying that Tidal treats the artist much better than Apple music by giving them more money.

If this report on non-payment is true it is clearly easy to say you will pay more if you then decide not to actually pay it...

 

[asdavis10]

Who says Apple Music is profitable?

It's safe to assume that since Spotify's ad-supported subscription is what loses them money that Apple Music would be profitable since after the 3 month free trial, every Apple Music subscriber is a paid sub.

 

[Kabeyun]

Tidal’s quality is noticeablely better since they have lossless quality available, so there’s that.

As far as the masses are concerned, I’d quibble with “noticeably” in favor of “except for some audiophiles the difference is negligible and people don’t care.” Didn’t save Betamax and won’t save Tidal.

 

[simonmet]

It's safe to assume that since Spotify's ad-supported subscription is what loses them money that Apple Music would be profitable since after the 3 month free trial, every Apple Music subscriber is a paid sub.

Unless they cancel it because tey choose not to pay for the service, like I did.

 

[itsmilo]

This is ironic coming from Tidal of all businesses. Remember their redic launch when they had all those big artists sign a piece of paper in a circle like some cult claiming everything is better and fair on tidal

 

[2010mini]

No one makes money off of music streaming services. The only reason Apple does reasonably well is the value added by baking the service into their ecosystem. Plus they can afford to run it at a loss. The only reason I use it is because it's the only seamless option with my watch and homepod.

True. Google, Apple, Amazon and now Spotify partnering with Hulu, are companies that have other revenue sources.

 

[AZMecha]

Bet Ya Taylor Swift is laughing her ass off...

 

[iamPro]

I love lossless music, but Tidal really has to fix the UI. The desktop/web app is a complete joke.

Here are only a few of the many issues I have with Tidal.

-You have to scroll till the end of a playlist to load all the music. And it loads about 30-50 songs each scroll. Yeah it’s my normal routine whenever I start Tidal. Want to explore new songs and go to a different page and get back? Yup, it’s scroll time again. Oh wait, you forgot to sort by album? You’ve guessed it, gotta get that scroll wheel rollin.

-Simply deleting tracks comes with lag. I have the latest 27inch iMac. Maybe it’s running on java or the like, but regardless the end user experience is plagued with lags everywhere for simple tasks.

-Shuffling playback does weird things such as only shuffling thru a few songs or at times shuffling only songs below the first song I selected. Its just super buggy. Yes, I’ve seen it shuffle only the last ten songs when I first clicked on the 10th to last song in the list.

-Can’t sort or filter new music by genre, artists, etc at various places in the app. I.g. say you want to search new Jazz music under the Masters (lossless) tab. You just get a random list of albums of all genres. Good luck discovering new lossless music. You have to click on each album to see what genre it is, and even then you have to click the info link which may or may not have the information you’re looking for.

-Similarly searching music from the search box is pretty basic. Again you can’t filter customize the search results to your liking.

-Tidal doesn’t ignore or warn when adding duplicates to favorites (Tracks) or custom playlists. And it’s gets even worse considering the fact that it lags to just remove songs.


The desktop Tidal app is a complete joke. Since Apple decided to neglect the the so-called audiophile crowd (for lack of better word), I got no choice but to use Tidal to take advantage of my headphone stuff, but boy is it torture to use their software.

FYI, the mobile app is better, which also has to do with the fact that you really don’t do much on your phone other than playing back your playlists.

Btw I just really needed a place vent and let out years of pent up frustration and anger from using Tidal.

 

[iSunrise]

Apple Music competitor? In terms of what? Cause even Spotify isn't a competitor in terms of profitability. Tidal is dying a slow death.

Must be fun living in a bubble...

Tidal has uncompressed FLAC streaming available, you can't beat the real deal.

 

[madKIR]

The vast majority don't care about lossless quality. Some do, but more services don't have this feature because it's not a deal breaker for the masses.

Moreover, in the world of Bluetooth/wireless headphones it's absolutely useless! Even if you have it on your device in lossless quality, it will be compressed in lower bit rates in order to pass through to the headphones via Bluetooth connection. So lossless is such a niche thing nowadays.

 

[minimo3]

It's safe to assume that since Spotify's ad-supported subscription is what loses them money that Apple Music would be profitable since after the 3 month free trial, every Apple Music subscriber is a paid sub.

Having paying customers is no guarantee of profitability. Moviepass has millions of paying customers and loses money hand over fist. For music, Average rights payment per stream is $0.007. Assuming 4 mins a song, if you streamed 24x7 it would cost Apple $75/mth in royalty payments. The break even point for Apple Music $10/mth is about 190 mins of streaming music a day I.e. a little over 3 hours. Of course this is just royalty payments and ignores other operational and SG&A expenses.

 

[MrRevelation]

Ugh. Tidal is the only place to get some Prince music. Just buy it already Apple.

Apple rarely responds to rumors in this particular dimension. No comment.

 

[Rogifan]

Apple streams Prince. Not all but a good bit. Music videos also. After his death, I think most players got at least some streaming rights. Totally not what he wanted but . . .

Only Tidal has his non Warner Bros music which is 20 years worth of music (1994 - 2014).

 

[Mike MA]

Only Tidal has his non Warner Bros music which is 20 years worth of music (1994 - 2014).

Be sure it‘ll be shifted to Apple Music soon.

 

[inSpumoni]

Tidal’s quality is noticeablely better since they have lossless quality available, so there’s that.

Noticeably better? Not really. You couldn't tell the difference between a regular AAC 256 kbps file from a lossless one, assuming the same master is used.

 

[nburwell]

It’s the beginning of the end for Tidal

 

[MICHAELSD]

Noticeably better? Not really. You couldn't tell the difference between a regular AAC 256 kbps file from a lossless one, assuming the same master is used.

On my Audeze EL-8 and even my Sennheiser Momentum I can.

 

[garya73]

Only Tidal has his non Warner Bros music which is 20 years worth of music (1994 - 2014).

Quite a bit of it is on Amazon Music Unlimited as well, plus there is always the option to buy the albums.

 

[Kabeyun]

On my Audeze EL-8 and even my Sennheiser Momentum I can.

Perhaps you can. But the point is that Tidal will fail if they’re depending on the intersection set of people who can and people who care.

 

[jimthing]

Moreover, in the world of Bluetooth/wireless headphones it's absolutely useless! Even if you have it on your device in lossless quality, it will be compressed in lower bit rates in order to pass through to the headphones via Bluetooth connection. So lossless is such a niche thing nowadays.

There are several codecs for Bluetooth, so no that's not necessarily true.
AptX and BT 5, et al.
[doublepost=1526621981][/doublepost]

Perhaps you can. But the point is that Tidal will fail if they’re depending on the intersection set of people who can and people who care.

Maybe, but why Apple "we care about music" erm, seemingly don't, when it comes to improving quality in the industry.
Sure, less bandwidth requirements. But an option for better quality could easily be sold by marketing various ideas, like better quality lossless BT5 codecs on new Airpods and Beats phones, and over Airplay 2 Homepod, and other ideas.

But... they can't be bothered these days. Because "emojis and fun and rainbows" and other mindless filler short term BS for five year olds, over constructive long term quality product improvements.

 

[Kabeyun]

Maybe, but why Apple "we care about music" erm, seemingly don't, when it comes to improving quality in the industry.
Sure, less bandwidth requirements. But an option for better quality could easily be sold by marketing various ideas, like better quality lossless BT5 codecs on new Airpods and Beats phones, and over Airplay 2 Homepod, and other ideas.

But... they can't be bothered these days. Because "emojis and fun and rainbows" and other mindless filler short term BS for five year olds, over constructive long term quality product improvements.

Claiming that Apple doesn’t care about music just because AM doesn’t have lossless is laughably incorrect and yet another example of internet histrionics. Same with the idea that Apple Incorporated can’t both be part of the Unicode Consortium and do anything else (another version of the MR trope: “Tim should stop [thing I don’t like] and focus on [thing I like] already”).

 

[maflynn]

Maybe, but why Apple "we care about music"

That's just plain silly, music is in the very ethos of the company. Apple Music is a very important component in apple's business as well. Just because it doesn't have a given feature that you think its important doesn't mean they don't care about music.

 

[jimthing]

Claiming that Apple doesn’t care about music just because AM doesn’t have lossless is laughably incorrect and yet another example of internet histrionics. Same with the idea that Apple Incorporated can’t both be part of the Unicode Consortium and do anything else (another version of the MR trope: “Tim should stop [thing I don’t like] and focus on [thing I like] already”).

No it isn't. They even optionally ingest lossless from iTunes Connect, but then down sample to lossy on distribution.

And don't put words in my mouth. I never said TC should stop doing anything. Entirely irrelevant to what I wrote. I actually said Apple are not focused on things people really care about, instead largely pointless five minute wonders like animojis et al.

 

[Kabeyun]

No it isn't. They even optionally ingest lossless from iTunes Connect, but then down sample to lossy on distribution.

And don't put words in my mouth. I never said TC should stop doing anything. Entirely irrelevant to what I wrote. I actually said Apple are not focused on things people really care about, instead largely pointless five minute wonders like animojis et al.

A. You haven’t refuted the point that Apple absolutely cares about music. They just don’t care as much that you care about lossless. Not the same thing.

B. You didn’t follow. I was just setting up an analogy: suggesting that Apple is focusing on emojis instead of lossless is analogous to others’ suggestion that they can’t do any other two things simultaneously. They’re not prioritizing lossless audio because they understand that People don’t care enough. Again, you’ve decided that this thing that you want, lossless audio, is a thing that everyone wants. Just not so. I and others (including the mod maflynn above to whom I notice you didn’t reply) are making the point that People don’t notice the difference and don’t care. Want to know how emojis stack up against lossless audio to the People? Go out and find the Lossless Audio Movie.