Rapper's Tidal respond to criticism with new feature focusing on upcoming artists

jonathan

April 17, 2015 2:49 AM

The streaming service had been lambasted by critics for alleged favouring mainstream musicians.

Following recent criticism, Jay Z's new high quality streaming service, Tidal, has introduced a new feature aimed to help upcoming artists.

Tidal launched last month (March 30), with the likes of Kanye West, Madonna, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Arcade Fire, Jack White, Daft Punk and more all attending the launch and signing an official Tidal charter.

Jay Z has claimed that the platform will be more beneficial for artists, but many have voiced their criticism of the company's royalty structure since its initial launch.

A press release now says that an updated app has been launched today (April 16) to include a new Tidal Rising function. "Tidal gives voice to tomorrow’s biggest names through TIDAL RISING, a program dedicated to promoting emerging and independent artists from around the world. Every week, nascent talent in any genre will emerge," the statement reads.

Lily Allen was one of the musicians to criticise Tidal recently. Allen said earlier in April: "I love Jay Z so much, but TIDAL is [so] expensive compared to other perfectly good streaming services... He’s taken the biggest artists & made them exclusive to TIDAL... people are going to swarm back to pirate sites in droves sending traffic to torrent sites."

Mumford & Sons recently said that they "wouldn't have joined" Tidal "even if they had asked", due its bias towards popular artists.

Meanwhile, Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard described the Tidal launch as "millionaires complaining about not being paid".

He said: "If I had been Jay Z, I would have brought out 10 artists that were underground or independent and said, 'These are the people who are struggling to make a living in today’s music industry. Whereas this competitor streaming site pays this person 15 cents for X amount of streams, that same amount of streams on my site, on Tidal, will pay that artist this much.' I think they totally blew it by bringing out a bunch of millionaires and billionaires and propping them up onstage and then having them all complain about not being paid."

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jonathan