Jay Z beats Apple with Tidal Launch Event [Update]

Jay Z is trumping Apple with what seems to be the coolest launch event ever for a product. A teaser video for a live streaming event at Tidal.com at 5pm ET is breaking the internet.

“The Tides They Are-A Changing,” tweeted Jay Z, who is rarely posting on his Twitter account. Hours ago Jay Z and many other high profile artists have turned their social media accounts into the color teal. A teaser video for a live streaming event at 5pm ET on Tidal.com is breaking the internet right now. This has Apple event quality without a lead up period. The announcement of the press event just came up today. The teaser video is though extremely powerful. Jay Z boiled down the essence of an Apple event hype into a intense couple of hours.

The video shows some of the hottest artists of our time in one room and many others are connected in via teleconferencing. The list of artists in the room include Rihanna, Beyonce, Kanye West, Jay Z, Daft Punk, Nick Minaj, Madonna, Calvin Harris, Jack White, Jason Aldean and Chris Martin. The video shows them all in silence. At 5pm ET I assume they will have something to say about Tidal.com.

Update:

Below is a recording of the Tidal press-conference. (starts at 30min in). Tidal is co-owned by several top artists. Apparently Jay Z opened up the ownership of Tidal to select artists including Daft Punk, Chris Martin, Beyonce, Rihanna, Kanye West, Alicia Keys and Jack White. The teaser video has been though much cooler than the press event. Jay Z over promised.

Kanye West shared on Twitter: “The love of music is louder than words. In five hours history will be made.”

Tidal is offering a high fidelity streaming service for $19.99 per month. The standard sound quality service runs for $9.99 per month. Besides high quality sound, the major difference of Tidal compared to Spotify and Apple’s upcoming Beats Music service is supposed it’s favorable terms for artists. It certainly appears Jay Z got the support from the best. It appears that Tidal tries to become the HBO of streaming music service as artists are supposed to release their new work on Tidal first and after a period of time other services get the content too. If Tidal can pull that off with many artists it would be a disaster for Apple and Spotify.

Tidal describes itself as the first music streaming service that combines the best High Fidelity sound quality, High Definition music videos and expertly Curated Editorial.

Jay Z bought Swedish Tidal just three weeks ago. This is a quick turn around to relaunch it already today. 

The live streaming of the Tidal launch will be available on Tidal.com.

Tidal is already offering subscriptions and there is a 30-day free trial offered.