Apple Music and Tidal burst onto the scene at roughly the same time, but unfortunately for Tidal, Apple Music seemed to have gotten most of the exposure. Tidal’s price (at the start) was also a very big turn off for many users, which saw the app grow rather slowly in terms of subscribers, at least versus Apple Music which seems to be on track to catching up with Spotify.
However it looks like things are changing for the better for Tidal, largely thanks to an exclusive deal that they had with Rihanna. The musician’s latest album ANTI was released on Tidal as a free exclusive earlier this week, in which 1 million digital copies would be given away if fans were to download Tidal’s app and use the redemption code.
That proved to be a very good move because Tidal’s app ranking shot up to 13 on the iTunes App Store, where last week it was sitting very, very far down at 147. Now the question is whether or not it will continue to remain in the top 20, or if it could possibly move up even further. Also whether or not those downloads all translate into subscriptions is a different story, but at least Tidal is now in the hands of many users.
For those who have no plans to subscribe to Tidal, Rihanna’s ANTI album will be available for purchase via iTunes, but as far as streaming is concerned, Tidal still holds the exclusive rights, at least for now.