Although it’s been publicly — very publicly — promoted ever since JAY Z (via his company, Project Panther Ltd.) acquired it near the top of 2015, TIDAL remains some sort of “secret society” to some. Sure, there was that “artist-owned model” introductory press conference where everyone from Madonna to Dead-Mow-5 signed some kind of Declaration Of Independence, and then there was that one time the said artists turned their Twitter AVIs blue. There’s also the fact that several artists, from Lil Wayne to T.I, “own” a piece of the company as well.
However, TIDAL has thus far remained shrouded in mystery when it comes to the only thing that truly matters: its numbers. While the company has always given reports on membership subscriptions (they currently stand at roughly 3 million; in comparison, Apple Music claims 11 million paid subscribers since its launch in June 2015, while Spotify claims 30 million), they have never revealed the artists streaming numbers to the likes of Nielsen and Billboard. Because of this, Kanye West‘s seventh album The Life Of Pablo failed to reach the Billboard charts in its first week.
Now, in a move that is unexpected, TIDAL has released the numbers for the album via Billboard, and apparently Kanye’s album moved like gangbusters: it was streamed approximately 250 million times in its first 10 days of release. Recently, Kanye caved in on his “TLOP is only available on TIDAL” embargo and put its first official single, “Famous” with Rihanna, on both iTunes and Spotify. However, all is still not ideal for the service, as they and JAY Z are the subject of a $5 million class-action lawsuit.
