Hindsight is always 20/20, and looking back on the fond old days of a few weeks ago, perhaps filling a stage with multi-millionaires complaining about not getting paid enough from streaming services when announcing your own costly streaming service was not the best idea. To be fair, how was a humble man like Jay Z able to know that the masses’ reaction to such a display would be basically to thumb their noses at it?
And the people are speaking. Despite a brief rise after the huge gala announcing the backers, the streaming app Tidal has begun a drastic decline. It is no longer in the top 700 apps for i-Phones (yes, that high-quality streaming must sound fantastic out of cheap ear buds on a cellphone) and recently has laid off 25 people (or “streamlined” as they have put it), and the company’s CEO has walked away — perhaps getting that dirt off his shoulder in the process. Dark times indeed seem to be falling on Jay Z’s kingdom.
While this turmoil has hit the Web with rush of snarky velocity, now comes word that Jay Z and Beyonce’s new album will be a Tidal exclusive. How much of a selling point this will be to people isn’t known. Also knowing the Internet, how exclusive that album will be to the service is questionable at best since people have a tendency to record things and post them elsewhere on the all powerful Internet. Only time will tell.
Then there is Kanye West, the somber voice of reason in all things, assuring us that Tidal is in no way the Illuminati — just like someone who is a part of Adam Weishaupt’s Bavarian Illuminati would say. Despite seeing all the fnords to the contrary, West assures us the streaming company is in no way a part of the Illuminated Ones of Bavaria by saying “if there was actually an Illuminati, it would be more like the energy companies.” Which is probably an old bait-and-switch tactic these shadowy global rulers would like us to fall for. He adds that they are “pinpointed as decoys for people who really run the world. I’m tired of people pinpointing musicians as the Illuminati. That’s ridiculous. We don’t run anything; we’re celebrities.” Sure, says the man who probably wants us to ignore all the significant aspects related to the number 23.
The JOE-DOWN 