Tidal tilts balance of digital power back to record labels

The revolution will not be televised, Gil Scott-Heron reckoned in 1970. But the "godfather of rap" was wrong. The revolution has been televised: in fact not just televised but live streamed across the globe.

Its leader is the self-styled "god of rap", Jay Z. Joining him is a vanguard of revolutionary pop stars, dedicated, in proper Marxian style, to seizing control of the commanding heights of the economy. At the New York press conference announcing their coup this week Madonna clambered on to a table like Marianne storming the Bastille, while Alicia Keys quoted Nietzsche. Kanye West, Che Guevara to Jay's Fidel Castro, spoke of "the beginning of a new world".

The cause of the fervour was the relaunch of Tidal, a music streaming service that Jay Z bought as part of a $56m deal with a Swedish tech company. Tidal, with 550,000 subscribers, is the "first ever artist-owned global music and entertainment platform", according to the rapper and his celebrity comrades, each of whom holds equity in the venture. They bill it as "the future of music", an action taken, Ms Keys said, "by the people, for the people". But audience whoops at the press conference were oddly muted. Is the revolutionary rhetoric really merited?

Artists' dreams of overthrowing their corporate paymasters have a long pedigree. Herb Alpert combined roles as chart-topping bandleader with co-running his own label, A&M Records. Frank Sinatra gained his "Chairman of the Board" nickname when he set up Reprise Records in 1960, promising acts greater creative freedom and better remuneration. The Beatles started their Apple label with a similar aim.

In the past, such insurrections foundered on the day-to-day grind. Grand talk of artistic independence was one thing. Making sure the records were stocked in Dullsville, Ohio, was quite another.

Sinatra sold Reprise after three years while The Beatles' Apple Records descended into chaos. Even Mr Alpert, under whom A&M Records became one of the biggest independent labels in the 1960s, told the Financial Times in 2005 of attending weekly finance meetings "where my eyes would just glass over and my nose would hit the table".

I cannot picture Jay Z dozing off in a finance meeting. The "black Warren Buffett", as he once called himself, takes a Buffett-like pleasure in turning money into more money. He also exists at a time when the music industry infrastructure is disappearing. In the low-cost, labour-free world of digital music, songs can be downloaded or streamed at the touch of a button.

Record labels ceded control over distribution to tech companies during the 2000s. Ever since there has been a battle over the value of music, which Jay Z and his A-List agitators are joining.

Tidal offers better audio quality and a higher rate of return to musicians than cheaper rivals such as Spotify. It is part of a wider struggle to force up music's price. Record labels are currently haggling with Apple (the Cupertino one) over the cost of its forthcoming streaming service. Spotify is being encouraged to reduce free access.

Amid all this tumult, experienced revolutionaries will note a crucial missing ingredient: the question of who controls the means of production. Jay Z has likened Tidal to a record store, not a record label. There is talk of him and his celebrity companions "curating" new talent. But the idea they might nurture the next generation of stars, rather like judges on the television reality show The Voice, seems unlikely.

The average age of the acts at the press conference was 37. If Tidal is to be more than a gated community for these established names it will have to submit to the traditional gatekeepers, the record labels, which remain pre-eminent at developing and breaking new music. The revolution televised this week was revolutionary in the sense of a wheel turning back to the music industry - away from the tech company upstarts.

The writer is the FT's pop critic

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