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WJSD: What’s your view on making music available for free, like Spotify does?
PT: Freemium is slowing down streaming in terms of getting paying subscribers –this needs to change for the future. The whole industry is shifting toward the strategy we have always believed in: that streaming services should be premium subscription models rather than giving away stuff.
WJSD: Why should a customer switch from other streaming services to Tidal?
PT: The reason is our exclusive content, and that we have a whole spectrum, from up-and-coming artists to the very established. It’s going to be the content richness, deep-diving into individual artists. It’s going to be a combination of content and artist engagement that we put on the platform, or that the artists publish themselves.
WJSD: The Tidal media event got extensive coverage, but it also met with a lot of skepticism and criticism. What are your thoughts on the event and how it was received?
PT: I was there; I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I thought it was extremely large of these global, well-known artists to step forward and say, “We need to change the model.” I don’t think they were thinking about themselves. I think they were thinking about the industry, about small, up-and-coming artists, about producers, everyone in the background who contributed to this music going live and getting into the market. Because the current model turns out to be unsustainable for new artists who don’t have distribution, or who don’t have any historical revenue streams to live on.
WJSD: Much has been made of Tidal’s audio quality. But is this still a selling point today when many listen to music through headphones on mobile devices?
PT: All artists in general care about sound quality. We offer a $9.99 monthly premium tier with good sound quality, and a $19.99 tier with very good sound quality, and people can choose.
WJSD: You’re facing well-funded rivals with big pockets. What’s the plan now?
PT: We will launch Tidal in even more markets, we will be marketing Tidal, we will be adding all the artists’ exclusive content and growing the organization.
Read the full interview at the source.
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