“After less than three months in the job, the interim chief executive has been swept out at Tidal, Jay Z’s Scandinavia-based music-streaming service,” Jens Hansegard reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“In announcing on Tuesday that Peter Tonstad was let go, a Tidal official said, ‘We are thankful to Peter for stepping in as interim CEO and wish him the best for the future,'” Hansegard reports. “Tidal, closely held by Jay Z and a group of other musicians, will be run by executives in New York and Oslo until a new chief is in place, the official said.”
“In March, a grandiose news conference was held to unveil and promote the service, but it fell flat as many music fans thought the company’s new pop-star owners came off as greedy and out-of-touch,” Hansegard reports. “At 770,000, Tidal’s base of paying subscribers pales in comparison Spotify’s. Nor does Tidal have anything like Apple’s marketing firepower. And despite its artist-owned pedigree, Tidal may not be able to match the extensive music-industry relationships that Apple has built up during the 12 years in which its iTunes Store has become the world’s biggest music retailer.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: At least Peter Tonstad will be spared the carnage that will be unleashed upon Tidal in 6 days, 9 hours, 29 minutes and 46 seconds.
MDN’s take had me cruelly chuckling just a little too loud…
Tidalwave….good-bye!
Here’s my understanding of how Tidal even happened:
– Beats by Dre does A, B, and C, and also owns D, E, and F, and is also home to G, H, and I talent.
– Apple buys Beats by Dre for billions, for the reasons above and then some.
– Dre gets excited and tells his friends he’s rich.
– Jay Z opens a company that kind of does A but not B or C, doesn’t own sh!t, and has no talent that Apple would want.
– Jay Z wonders why he is not a billionaire.
So now I’m wondering what other half-assed inferior copycatting Jay Z is going to come up with next. He clearly doesn’t understand the concept of building value, or even what specifically about Beats was valuable.
This is what happens when the founder’s head is as big as a basketball.
Don’t get me wrong my fellow Mac users, I’m all for this coming Apple streaming music approach. The problem I have is gloating. Recall how Microsoft used to rub it in our faces? That’s kind of what we’re doing here. If Tidal dies on it’s own that’s fine – just like the roadkill for all the other Apple competitors. gloating displays a lack of good taste. Let the better platform win.
Agreed, but the pure ridiculousness of Tidal demands it.
Agreed right back at ya’…..Tidal will fail due to ego and arrogance. The last dozen+ years at MS prove that formula doesn’t work.
Meanwhile, think ‘good taste’, as in WWSD.
I totally agree. The hate that is spewed at MDN is beyond excessive. A more hate filled group of people is truly hard to imagine.
99% of the people here believe that others must fail in order for Apple to win. A primitive way to think to say the least.
This is a fan site, and most of what you see is good natured ribbing of the other team. This is furthered by the underdog mentality that a lot of long time Mac users have. There is no doubt that some fans take it too far. Personally I am much more shocked at the true hate that is revealed when the political discussions get going….
Amen. If you can’t take the heat, read some other blogs, but then …
It is likely you will read anti-Apple on the Samsung and Tidal oriented blogs: can’t win.
When you’ve been repeatedly beaten in the past, and now you manage to win, you get to gloat. Don’t take that away from us.
There are 770,000 people out there who think Tidal is a good enough idea to pay for? Huh.
——RM