For a comparatively small music streaming service, Tidal has an illustrious history.
After starting as a project by Norwegian company Aspiro, Shawn Carter, better known as Jay-Z, took the helm in early 2015.
The service cost the rap star and busy entrepreneur $56 million.
A number of other well-known musicians such as Rihanna, Kanye West, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin or Beyoncé, Carter's wife, acquired minority shares.
The announcements at the start were also in line with this prominence.
Benjamin Fisher
Editor in Business.
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The first musician-owned platform aims to provide a better experience for musicians and fans, it said.
Jay-Z told The New York Times, "The challenge is getting people to respect music and its value again." At the time of the service's acquisition, the debate over Spotify's ad-supported free model was in full swing underway
Spotify under pressure
As a result, Tidal started without a freemium offer.
You could choose between the standard subscription for $9.99 per month, with the usual compressed sound quality, and the hi-fi version for $19.99.
The service should also score with exclusive content, so that streaming fans could only listen to individual works by their favorite artists on Tidal, at least for a short time.
Apple also relied on expensive exclusive deals to market its service, which was launched in mid-June 2015.
But the trend only lasted for a short time, and many have long since come to terms with the advertising-financed approach.
The Swedes counted 60 million users and 15 million subscribers when Jay-Z started with Tidal.
At the end of last year there were 406 million and 180 million respectively.
The last information about Tidal's subscriber base, on the other hand, dates back to June 2016: it was said to have been three million at the time.
Unpleasant headlines followed.
According to a May 2018 report by the Norwegian newspaper "Dagens Næringsliv", the streaming numbers of a Beyoncé and a Kanye West album are said to have been embellished, which consequently led to higher royalties.
In 2019, the Norwegian authorities began investigations.
Tidal is now owned by Block, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's financial service.
A little over a year ago, the company, which was still trading under the name Square at the time, acquired a majority stake in Tidal for $302 million.
Carter is still involved, as are the other musicians.
The rapper also joined Block's board of directors.
Focus on 19.99 euro tariff
Meanwhile, changes at Tidal were not forthcoming until November.
Since then there has been the once frowned upon advertising-financed model.
"The freemium tariff is a very easy way for users to get to know Tidal and see what we have to offer," said Lior Tibon, Tidal's manager responsible for operations (COO), in an interview with the FAZ First, however, only in the US, “by far the most important market” for Tidal.
Over time, as many freemium users as possible should switch to one of the two payment models.
In principle, Spotify has also been arguing like this for years.
However, the focus at Tidal is on the 19.99 euro tariff, which is very expensive for the entire market.
"We could have lowered the prices or offered even better quality for the standard price of 9.99 euros," says Tibon, probably alluding to Apple's corresponding step, "but it was very important to us to maintain this price point".
The "all-you-can-eat-9.99 mass model" doesn't work for a service like Tidal.
Rather, different price models would have to make different offers in order to address specific user groups.
Above all, Tidal is about “superfans”: listeners who want to stream music at the best possible quality and who care deeply about supporting their favorite artists.
"Of course, the 19.99 subscription isn't an option for the masses," says Tibon.
Competing with Spotify, Apple and Amazon hardly seems expedient for Tidal anyway.
Like the much smaller provider Qobuz, Tidal wants to specifically address audiophiles.
With the new majority owner, the topic of finance has also come into focus.