High Fidelity Music Streaming: Jay Z Launches New Music Streaming Service…Tidal

It’s no surprise that many customers are turning to streaming services to listen to their favorite artists.  Now a new player, Jay Z,  has entered the market for a fee of $56 million. He held a press conference today officially relaunching Tidal, the music subscription streaming service owned by artists.

Jay Z has attracted big names in the music industry, many as part-owners in this new streaming music venture, such as Beyonce, Kanye West, Madonna, Usher, Jason Aldean, and 2 members of Arcade Fire.

With these big names attached you’d expect that the Tidal loss-less high fidelity sound to be excellent, and it should not dissapoint (Tidal reportedly offers 1411 kbps, compared to 325 kbps on Spotify and 256 kbps on itunes).  You may also expect some premium prices, and you’ll see those as well.

At this time, it’s reported that there will be no free version of Tidal, and users will either pay $19.99 per month for exclusive content and “CD-quality” streams or $9.99 for a compressed format (with standard-def audio that pays artsts standard royalties).

Tidal currently has 17,000 subscribers and time will tell how this service will rate to other streaming services, like Spotify.