Tidal CEO and former Samsung sellout Jay Z may have wiped himself off the list of celebrities set to receive a complimentary Apple Watch, thanks to a vicious freestyle rap aimed at Apple, Spotify and YouTube.
In front of 3,000 fans over the weekend in New York, Jay Z defended his Tidal streaming music service by describing it as being “all about the music … We ain’t gonna let nobody take our music.”
Referring to Apple — and possibly hinting at the company’s plan to approach artists with exclusive deals for the upcoming Beats Music relaunch — Jay Z said “Jimmy Iovine offered a safety net,” only for him to choose to go it alone.
He also rapped that, “I feel like YouTube is the biggest culprit. Them n**gas pay you a tenth of what you supposed to get. You know n**gas die for equal pay, right? You know when I work I ain’t your slave, right?”
Describing the popular perception that Tidal is a company designed to make a select few megastar artists even richer, Jay Z commented how, “You bought nine iPhones, and Steve Jobs is rich. [Nike’s] Phil Knight worth trillions, you still bought those kicks. Spotify is $9 million, they ain’t say s**t.”
The most controversial part of the diss, however, was his explanation for Tidal’s troubles — claiming a conspiracy against him as a black entrepreneur.
“You got some explaining to do,” he told the crowd of hip-hop fans. “The only one they hating on look the same as you. I know they trying to bamboozle you. Spending millions on media trying to confuse you. I had to talk to myself, Hov get used to it. It’s politics as usual.”
Check out the video below:
It has been previously suggested that Apple has taken swipes at Tidal by taking a long time to approve updates for the service’s iOS app, leading to the app falling out of the top 700 iPhone apps for the first time since its March 30 launch.
Robert Kondrk, vice president of iTunes Content, has also reportedly told executives at Universal Music Group that Tidal artists who put out exclusive music on Jay Z’s service won’t be promoted as featured artists on iTunes. Since this can be a major boost for artists (see Jay Z’s wife, Beyonce, for example), that’s certainly no idle threat, if true.
Source: PageSix
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
15 responses to “Jay Z fires shots at Apple and Spotify in vicious freestyle rap”
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Blimey this is getting ugly…
I think Jay Z is exaggerating a little in his rant… Meanwhile, in the UK, Tidal premium tier (called HIFI) went from £19.99 to £25.99 when subscribing throuh iTunes… Crazy!
apple’s 30% cut. Its fair I think. If apple’s hardware and app store brings customers to your service, it deserves the cut. These guys are just passing the price straight down to the customer. Its no different from any other industry. Obviously, you should just go to their website and sign up there.
oh yes indeed I know, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Apple getting a cut; I’m just thinking, Tidal already have had bad reaction to their pricing (and their product overall); people are wondering whether the £19.99 is too much or not then you go to iTunes to subscribe and realise it’s actually £6 more than what you expected… Spotify have the same problem with the inflated price… however, Napster’s subscription is £9.99 whether you get it through the App store or directly… Not that I’m a Napster fan/subscriber…
They don’t know what their margin on the subscription service is yet. For downloads, they know the cost and they have a set $ amount per track or per album, with streaming, there is no set number of tracks people stream, they only know what the royalty payment is per song streamed, but they aren’t charging per song streamed. So that 30% cut is something that’s completely unreliable to suggest as a mark up for streaming. Downloads yes, but not streaming.
I didn’t understand a word that idiot is saying.
Then you probably don’t understand any type of poetry either. Calling him an idiot for your lack of understanding is actually kinda insane. Like the witch burning’s of the past.
The problem is that for a subscription service to make any money, they have to figure out how many songs, on average, are being streamed each month, what their real overhead costs are and to have an average of at least 30% Gross margin. But since everyone doesn’t stream the same number of songs per month, it’s impossible for them to figure out what to charge for a monthly fee. They pay a per stream royalty, but some subscribers stream more or less songs per month. So far, no one is making any profits after it’s all said and done, so right now, it’s just a matter of signing up as many people as they can get to hopefully at least break even, which they have yet to do. So they are playing with how much to charge people to get people attracted to the service.
Up next, Queen Bey dumps Jay-Z
Ok this is semi related to Apple at least. Childish but still at least it invokes the word Apple in its context and headline.
Busting your balls aside the Samsung sellout comment is hilarious. This is up there with Jeb Bush article :)
Hey Jay Z, you might go up on a stage and rap, but you’re just another rich businessman to me… Watch what you call that kettle…
he is just pissed that his wife got the gold link bracelet and not him!
im not understanding when he says “spotify is $9 million.” Does he mean $9 billion?
This message would be slightly easier to swallow if it wasn’t coming from the mouth of a man worth half a billion dollars…