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MUSIC

US rap mogul Jay Z defends Tidal venture

Rapper Jay Z has defended his Tidal streaming service as viable and a boon to artists after a much-criticized start to the revamped company has given its main Swedish rivals at Spotify little cause for concern.

Published: 27 April 2015 08:04 CEST
US rap mogul Jay Z defends Tidal venture
Jay Z's got 99 problems but Tidal ain't one. Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

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“We are here for the long haul. Please give us a chance to grow and get better,” Jay Z wrote in one of a volley of messages on social media site Twitter on Sunday.

The US rapper earlier this year bought Tidal's Swedish parent company Aspiro for $56 million amid the rapid growth of streaming services, such as Spotify, Rhapsody and Deezer, which allow unlimited on-demand music.

Jay Z rolled out a redesigned service on March 30th at a New York event featuring fellow stars, including his wife Beyonce, Madonna, Daft Punk and Kanye West.

The artists said that they wanted to take charge of streaming's future, amid criticism by musicians – notably superstar Taylor Swift – that industry leader Spotify offers insufficient compensation.

But a number of critics, including British band Mumford and Sons, voiced dismay at Tidal's launch and especially the sight of highly paid starts complaining about payments.

Jay Z hit back and accused unnamed “big companies” of spending millions of dollars in a smear campaign against Tidal.

“Tidal pays 75 percent royalty rate to ALL artists, writers and producers – not just the founding members on stage,” he wrote, saying that independent artists could keep 100 percent if they worked directly with the company.

Jay Z also proclaimed Tidal to be globally minded, saying that his cousin had moved to Nigeria to look for new talent.

Tidal has billed itself as a service for audiophiles. It uses larger, higher-quality file sizes than Spotify and, unlike the rival, does not have any free level to subscriptions.

It has also offered exclusive material, including the streaming of the final concert of rocker Jack White's acoustic tour on Sunday.

Nonetheless, Tidal on Saturday ranked 1,027 among most-downloaded apps on iPhones in the United States and was number 61 among most music apps, according to monitoring service App Annie.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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