If you follow prominent musicians, expect to be seeing a lot of cyan in your Twitter feed today. A range of stars have turned their profile pictures and header images “blue” on the social network. Why? To promote streaming service Tidal.
Jay Z is expected to announce his plans for the Spotify rival later tonight – around 10pm BST according to a countdown on the Tidal website – but in the meantime he’s made an impressive show of force with support from fellow musicians.
Kanye West, Rihanna, Deadmau5, Nicki Minaj, Usher, Coldplay, Jack White’s Third Man Records and even Beyoncé – who doesn’t use Twitter – have all changed their profiles while tweeting out the #TIDALforALL hashtag.
Jay Z recently completed his acquisition of Norwegian firm Aspiro, which ran the Tidal and WiMP streaming services. The company ended 2014 with 500,000 paying subscribers, making it a well-known brand in Scandinavia, but not on the global stage.
What could he do to change that? The explosion of turquoise on Twitter this morning is likely just the first step in giving Tidal a profile that will give it a chance of competing with rivals: not just Spotify, but Apple’s upcoming Beats Music relaunch, as well as YouTube Music Key, Google Play, Deezer, Rhapsody/Napster, Rdio and the rest.
Note, many of the artists taking part in the Twitter promotion were reported to have attended a get-together arranged by Jay Z earlier in the year to talk through his plans for Tidal.
What’s not clear yet is whether their support will extend to exclusivity for some of their music. That’s something Apple would certainly kick back against – it has been lobbying for similar exclusives for iTunes in recent months – while Spotify wouldn’t be too happy either.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…