Tidal: A New Change for Music Streaming?

A lot of my classmates have talked about the new rise of "Tidal" for music streaming. It was mentioned in a couple blogs like Nick's Blog and Media Minded. Ally also researched it for her final project where she gave the class a more detailed look into Jay-Z's new project. The question everyone seems to be asking is whether Tidal will do well and people will actually pay to listen to their music.

We are living in a time where people don't want to pay for their music anymore. Personally, I have't purchased music for years. That goes for buying CDs from the store too. I guess I never thought about how it affects the artists who work hard to create the music for all of us to listen to. It's a tough situation though. Many people in class have said they don't want to pay the money for this music streaming site because they would rather put their money toward more important things like food and college loans. This makes sense, because why would people choose to pay for music when they can get it for free?

We have many free music streaming sites right now like Pandora and Spotify. People even use YouTube to listen to their music. Pandora and Spotify both have free options, while Tidal will not have the option to listen to their music for free.

Tidal's goal is to create a new era for artists.

The way they are going to be successful is if they achieve their goal is the music fans who don't want compressed audio and want to support their favorite artists. There are some big names so they might have a chance in pulling this off, especially with their power in the music industry. Even though I know that a lot of people don't think its worth it, their minds may change in the future. For now I wouldn't pay the money, but if it happens that a lot of songs are taken off of Spotify and Pandora I may consider switching over. Also, if it really does become as exclusive as rumors say it will be, I could be convinced to try it out.

I am interested to see how successful Tidal becomes and if Jay-Z will succeed to create the "new era" that he is working toward. It could either have a huge impact on music streaming or just be another site for people to listen to music on.