It’s been a minute since we’ve heard anyone express their disappointments or admiration for Jay Z‘s hi-fi streaming service Tidal. The star-studded service has had its ups and downs since its inception in April, but this morning, Tidal gained another high-profile ally in Prince. The guitar god just dropped his second surprise album of 2015—HITnRUN Phase Two—exclusively on Tidal and had some kind words for the service in his latest Ebony interview:
HITNRUN sounds like today. Tidal is sinking money into it and they need it. And my heart is always on because I want them to do well. [Beyoncé and Jay Z] have taken a lot of abuse, their family has. A historic amount of abuse between the two of ‘em. And when we win on this, none of us’ll gloat. He’s not the gloating type anyway. He’s slick with his. He says to brush the dirt off your shoulder. “Y’all just need to stop. Just calm down! Everybody calm down! There ya go.”
[Tidal has] a million-plus subscribers. Spotify has 10. So if you imagine a million people in front of you? That’s a lot of people. So you gotta talk to them and you getting ready to drop something and all of ‘em are gonna get it. What do you wanna say? How are you gonna move all of ‘em? Oh, now it gets interesting. It’s always going to be the peanut gallery and that’s all right.
My thing is this. The catalog has to be protected. And some of our fans were actually disingenuous. Taking the time to get their playlists together and yeah, it’s gone. Now you got to actually go subscribe to get the music that you lost on Spotify. Spotify wasn’t paying, so you gotta shut it down.
Now, let’s all imagine hanging out with the Carter family and Prince over the holidays.
(via Stereogum)
