@MarcusGarvey good write up fam. This is my 2 cents on it.
My personal view on this is that technology is enormously difficult to be successful in and if people thought that going up against Apple, Spotify and these companies would be easy, they were sadly mistaken. Jay-Z and co. is doing everything it can to carve a spot, it's not about "beating them" it's about creating a lane for his music and the industry he leads. The problem is just people's perception, every single day they hammer on Jay, it takes time for a business to thrive. The company had 5 straight years of losses and nobody said anything or even gave Tidal a tenth of the tongue lashing they're getting today - not until Jay-Z came into the picture. There's too much noise surrounding it and it's not about Tidal it's about Jay-Z being a success and people not liking that shit at all, because we know the outcome that he'll have even more success.
He owns all of Aspiro, he could close Tidal and start a new one. The financials are not for Tidal, they're Aspiro's which represent the entire company. It's a significantly smaller business than it's competitors but the problem I feel will be that any success they have (b/c of the size of the company) will be overlooked and dissed on b/c it's not Apple numbers (consider Apple is a multi-billion dollar business versus Aspiro being a $50 million business). If Aspiro does $5 million that's a huge success, representing 10% of it's value accumulated in 12 months but the ignorant public will shit on them for it b/c it's not $60 billion. Citing, "Jay-Z spends that on chains every year ha !" this type of ignorance is why I decided to leave the thread. I mean everyday it's something, people are attacking the fact there's no black people working for Aspiro when the company is based in Sweden (a Scandinavian country) where there aren't a lot of black people to begin with. What does his staff have to do with anything ????? Most of those people have been with the company for many many years, but why didn't they get backlash then ? There's what I call noise in business and you have to learn to tune it out and do what YOU do to win. Getting absorbed in it usually has disastrous consequences. It's not about Tidal it's about Jay-Z and corporate America simply not accepting a Black Man in a position of power to win. If Jay separates himself from Tidal muthafuckas will breathe a sigh of relief SMMFH talmbout "one nigger down, a whole race to go - this is what happens when you apes try to be successful doing what we do" SMMFH. Sad tho how even posters on the IC join the fight to bring down a brother and not just any brother but one who has always advocated for our personal growth and never bit his tongue in his music to make our stories known.
Jay-Z has always held a turtle approach to things, where he builds things gradually and when they are mature they bring him excess levels of cash and people hail him a wunderkind, marvelling at how he did it. People said Jay was crazy for making his own label, clothing line and liquor lines - now it's the norm and expected of rappers. Now he's building a channel for his music to thrive so he can own his own distribution platform and it's the same thing. Like I said, let time tell the story, of course all of these labels are going to feverishly fight him tooth and nail to stop him because if Jay gets it how he wants, he literally liberates musicians from the confines of being signed/raped by a major giving the artist control and their own platform to have their music heard. He's essentially taking the model used in the cable TV business and attributing it to the music business. It will work it's just going to take a long time, but because we live in a society of people who want instant gratification, they'll never truly understand or appreciate it until it happens and they all miss the boat. At that point like I said, they'll marvel at Jay-Z as they always have.
