Artists limit distribution, hurt fans

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Tidal has emerged victorious this year, as Rihanna, Kanye West and Beyoncé released albums exclusive to the new music streaming app.

These albums brought Tidal out of the darkness and brought in subscribers.

After it’s 2015 launch, Tidal had about 540,000 subscribers.

Over the past few months, it has gained more than 3 million subscribers.

While these numbers and growing user-base may be good for Tidal, it’s not doing well for fans.

Tidal’s mission is to bring exclusive content to it’s subscribers, but it doesn’t seem to be working out.

When Kanye released his recent album, it went to Tidal exclusively.

He even released a series of tweets saying that it would be staying on Tidal and the album will not be moved to other streaming services, but after about a month, “Life of Pablo” was released to Apple Music and Spotify.

When Kanye’s album dropped, I was immediately given a link to where I could listen to the whole album totally free.

It’s not just me, once an album drops, people immediately start working on ways to get it to the public for free.

So Tidal’s promise to give exclusive content isn’t really working, in my opinion.

I mean, Beyoncé dropped her album and within an hour, I was watching her music videos on my Twitter feed.

I just think that Tidal is wasting its time by blocking fans from getting to exclusive music.

A person even filed a lawsuit against both Kanye and Jay Z for “fraudulently inducing consumers to subscribe to Tidal.”

Not to mention Tidal is pretty pricey.

While most music streaming services are $9.99, Tidal offers HiFi, which brings users an even higher quality of music for $20 a month.

I understand that Tidal is smart for releasing exclusive content to bring in more money and more users.

Taylor Swift is guilty of this, too.

Last year the pop artists removed all her music from music streaming services and said that fans would have to buy her album if they wanted to listen to her music.

Earlier this year, the artist made a deal wit Apple Music and now her music exclusively streams for Apple.
Which isn’t really fair.

I pay for Spotify and sometimes, I just really want to jam out to “Bad Blood” by Taylor Swift, but cant because I don’t want to pay for two music streaming services.

A lot of streaming services do offer free trials, and Tidal does as well, but how many people just use the 30-day trial and then unsubscribe?

Bottom line is that album exclusivity hurts fans more than anything.

Some people cannot afford the $10 a month subscription fees.

Fans are left waiting weeks or even months to listen to an album that everyone else has already had.