Music's Roc-A-Fella sees Tidal's rise

"At least 15 artists were named on Monday as co-owners of Tidal, the streaming service acquired by Jay Z"Financial Times, March 30

Was there some sort of charity concert this week for flood relief?

Ah, the doe-eyed pop stars making earnest speeches in front of a screen with the word "Tidal" on it. Actually, this was the announcement of the Tidal music streaming service, a new venture from the rapper-cum-mogul Jay Z.

The self-described "Roc-A-Fella" of music?

Yes. He wants to help artists take back ownership of their output and disrupt the dominance of streaming services such as Spotify.

Sorry? You'll have to forgive me: I listen to music the old-fashioned way - MP3 download.

Well, after the shutdown of peer-to-peer (P2P) network Napster in 2001 failed to stop the rise of music-sharing sites that made tracks easy to find for free, the industry faced a crisis. Its first response was to take more control of live events, memorabilia, endorsements and so forth.

Just the sort of soul-destroying commercialisation that artists love.

But then came Apple's iTunes, proving that people will pay for music downloads as long as the experience is frictionless, secure and well integrated with their mobile devices. Pirating music via P2P sites may be cheap but it's also fiddly; plus you never know what sort of virus you might download.

So iTunes saved the day?

The pie was significantly smaller. But for a while it looked as though power had shifted from record labels to one technology company.

So what about Spotify?

The people behind the Swedish streaming service took it one step further. They realised that because record labels were in distress, bargain-basement deals could be struck for access to their catalogues. The company's big coup was figuring out that people don't necessarily want to store, download or own the files. What they really want is unconditional and instant access to the music they enjoy, and a near limitless amount of choice. And they're willing to pay for it, as Spotify's 74 per cent revenue growth in 2013 to €747m proves.

So the labels secured revenue for their catalogues and a stake in the streaming business; the artists took a cut; and consumers received a product they valued. Win, win, win.

You'd think. Except it turns out the artists weren't happy about becoming beholden to yet another party. Especially an internet-based start-up they believed was undervaluing and commodifying their work even more than their labels had - and all the while extracting rents for itself. They were also unhappy about how advertising on the free-to-use part of the service was encroaching on their content and polluting their artistic vision.

So the artists struck back.

Things came to a head last year when Taylor Swift, one of the most listened-to artists on Spotify, rebelled by pulling her catalogue from the service. Artists then realised that a strike by one popular performer can compromise Spotify's model - and began to imagine what the collective bargaining power of the world's leading performers could achieve.

How does Tidal come in?

Well, if you're going down the collective bargaining route, why not boycott the outsider's platform and build your own? It's not a hard thing to put together if you have the considerable capital base of the artistic community to hand.

So Tidal's not really as much a streaming service as a musical alliance?

Think of it as the return of the professional guild. A musicians' cartel in the style of the oil producers' Opec, with Madonna, Kanye West, Rihanna, Beyonce, Daft Punk and Coldplay as the most established music makers in the role of Saudi Arabia.

But doesn't that equate to collusion?

So long as the artists are paid in proportion to how may times their tracks are played, they still have an incentive to compete to produce the catchiest tunes.

Might other professions whose incomes are being undermined by technology organise themselves in a similar way?

It depends how replaceable they are. Minicab drivers have tried to boycott Uber but they have yet to launch a rival employee-owned platform that is as convenient or competitive. It's simply too easy for Uber to find low-cost driver substitutes. The same can't be said of skilled professions or novelists. If they started pulling their content from other people's services or the free web in a similarly organised fashion and transferred it to their own gated platform, then perhaps users would feel compelled to pay up.

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