So Apple might be thinking about buying Tidal, the music-streaming service owned by Jay Z and a gaggle of his artist friends. The companies at least seem to be chatting, maybe not too formally. “The talks are ongoing and may not result in a deal,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s sources. Ben Sisario of the New York Times threw some cold water on the murmurs, tweeting, “Two highly placed sources tell me that Apple is not buying Tidal.” But the idea is out there.
And I kind of have mixed feelings about it. Not as a business deal qua deal. But from the perspective of a music fan.
The logic of the (still completely theoretical) acquisition is obvious enough. Apple’s own streaming service, Apple Music, promotes itself by offering exclusive releases from big acts like Drake, Future, and Chance the Rapper, buying up the rights to offer their work before anybody else. But Tidal seems to have a lock on new music from massive artists like Kanye West, Rihanna, and (of course) Beyoncé, who own stakes in the platform. By buying Tidal, Apple might also buy their loyalty, along with about 4.2 million new users (that would bring it to about 17 million paying customers, behind Spotify’s 30 million).
As an Apple Music subscriber, I find this personally pretty appealing. The exclusive-content game that Apple and Tidal have been playing has been unpleasant for fans so far (for a variety of reasons, Spotify has avoided exclusives). When a big release drops on the wrong streaming service, you either have to wait patiently while everybody else gabs about the record, pirate it, or sign up for a free trial you fully plan to cancel. In the end, the collective experience of enjoying a huge new album gets fragmented, which sort of defeats the point of collective experiences. Theoretically, buying Tidal would allow Apple to solve that problem by becoming the sole major source for big new releases.
But in way, that’s also a scary thought. Music fans would suddenly find themselves with no choice but to pay a monthly fee to Tim Cook for the privilege of participating in culture as it unfolds in real time. Apple would become America’s pop music utility. Maybe that’s not so different from getting stuck in a neighborhood with a local cable monopoly. But cable monopolies are awful. I don’t want to think of my music service the way I think about Time Warner Cable.
It would also work against artists, who are almost certainly better off with multiple companies competing for the exclusive rights to their music than if Apple was the only customer. Plus, it would hand Apple even more power to decide which artists thrive or fail based on whether it promotes them.
So, sure, the status quo on exclusive releases is an unappealing hassle. But the alternative—Apple buys Tidal and dominates the exclusives game—is an unappealing pseudo-monopoly. Again, mixed feelings.
