As The Tidal Turns

If there is one thing the Tidal is good at its keeping the company name in the headlines, be it good, shady or otherwise. One of Tidal’s most recent headline is nothing related to music. Reports have surfaced that the music platform is looking to expand on its budding video content initiative with the addition of full-length movies which may “hit the tide” in the next 60 days.

Anonymous sources claim the movie service will feature original content as well as acquired films. Tidal plans to work with an indie studio or producer on a partnership to create original movies. (Tyler Perry, Ava DuVernay, Lee Daniels…fall in line).

As quiet as it’s been kept, Tidal has had a video component since the relaunch under Jay-Z. Several music videos, exclusive and otherwise, have already aired on the service. Tidal also expanded into original TV programming with two new shows contracted in November. If it does add feature films into the mix, that would imply that Tidal is interested in becoming a one-stop entertainment shop rather than a music only provider. It’s a fact that the music isn’t paying the bills!

As Andre 3000 said in “Ms. Jackson,” forever, ever, forever, ever? Forever never seems that long in Kanye West’s world!! To be exact, it’s somewhere in the range of seven weeks.

Not too long ago, Kanye  West was a Jay-Z ride or die. He was represented by Roc Nation Management, toured with Jay-Z and vowed to loyalty to Tidal. West recently tweeted that his new project, The Life of Pablo, would “never” be available on Apple’s music platforms. Forever in Yeesus translates to the music now being available on Apple Music, Spotify, Google and Kanye’s website.

The Tidal exclusivity route appeared to be a mixed bag for West. The streaming service recently announced that Pablo saw 250 million streams in its first 10 days alone, but the album was also an immediate target for music piracy. Keep in mind his propensity for the theatrical so there’s still speculation that this whole thing is an April Fool’s prank or he’s officially become a puppet of his mother-in-law who is closely connected to Kanye’s new manager, Scooter Braun, who also manages Justin Beiber and a few other no names. How much would you pay for a Kanye vs Beiber slap-down ticket? This could all be a stunt, similar to the prank story that Jay-Z had sold Tidal to Google.

But wait, there’s more in Tidal Town.

Jay Z is preparing to wax the former owners of Tidal and trying to claim back a sum east of 100 million via a lawsuit.

The rapper and business mogul has written to several of the former major shareholders in Tidal/WiMP owner Aspiro, accusing them of exaggerating how many subscribers the service had when his finance vehicle, Project Panther Bidco, bought the company at the start of last year. Jay Z bought Tidal and its parent company Aspiro for 464 million Swedish krone ($57 million US dollars) in March last year.

Jay Z reportedly claims that the figure of 503,000 his team was given for worldwide subscribers of the company in January 2015 was misleading. In addition, he claims that the business was in much worse condition than what was indicated in the statements he received at the time.

Schibsted communications manager Anders Rikter is quoted as saying that the company was “unsympathetic” to Jay Z’s letter and had no comment.

There is so much going on with Tidal, I vote to turn this drama into a series that can easily replace “Vinyl” on HBO!