Tidal – The foot vote.

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An example of how to make customers unhappy.

• The release of Kanye West’s latest album, Life of Pablo has rocketed Tidal up the Apple App. Store charts but I suspect that Tidal’s awful handling of its new customers has done more harm than good.
• At the time of release, Life of Pablo was made exclusive to Tidal and available to buy as a digital download or as part of the streaming option.
• This exclusive rocketed Tidal from 237^th in the US Apple App Store to No.1 but interestingly there has been no corresponding impact in the Google Play charts as measured by App Annie.
• Clearly, the aim of the exclusive was encourage users to sign up for Tidal’s music service which to date has continued to languish as a result of poor management and a lack of differentiation.
• However, sometime after the album’s release, Kanye West decided to pull the album for further tweaking leaving only the streaming option open to users.
• The album is expected to be available again next week.
• The result is that thousands of users have paid for the album but have not received the download as promised.
• The resulting storm of complaints and Tidal’s slowness to respond to has done further damage to Tidal’s reputation and raises questions about its ability to scale and the way it handles its artists.
• To be fair to Tidal, the mess caused by the album only being temporarily available is not its fault, but the way it has dealt with the fall-out indicates that there are real problems.
  • First. The mess over payments and refunds combined with its slowness to act raises questions as to whether Tidal is capable of running a service with tens of millions of subscribers without the quality of service taking a nosedive.
  • Second. This incident also shows that a music service needs to be able to exercise some control over the content that it is selling.
  • A far better response to this incident would have been to keep selling the album and then promise to send those that purchased it a new and improved version when it is available next week.
  • I suspect that in this case, Tidal had no control over the availability of this album and is now paying the price for it.
• The net result is likely to be that incensed fans will resort to other methods to get the album which is already easily available for download on peer to peer networks and Usenet.
• This is another example of how important it is to put the user first especially when he has paid for something as in Digital Life it is easier than ever to vote with one’s feet and there are almost always “free” options available.
• Hence, I suspect that the impact on Tidal’s subscriber base could well be negative as users realise that there are better, more reliable services elsewhere at the same price.
• Apple and Spotify are likely to be the main beneficiaries of Tidal’s woes but I think that Tidal’s numbers are so small that it is unlikely to make a visible difference to either company.
• Apple and Spotify remain the two leaders in music streaming and the only two (excluding YouTube) that are likely to be around long term.