There’s a reported a war shaping up between APPLE’s BEATS MUSIC, set for a JUNE launch and JAY Z’s streaming service TIDAL. THE NEW YORK POST reports, “last week it emerged that TIDAL, following its MARCH 30th launch, has fallen out of the iPHONE top 700 apps. But positioning in the app charts is driven by downloads, and according to our source, APPLE ‘deliberately took a long time to approve TIDAL iOS app updates. TIDAL had a new app on ANDROID on APRIL 15th, but still hasn’t received approval for APPLE’s iOS app store’.”
Any artist that shows favor to TIDAL is also likely to run into problems at BEAT MUSIC, as THE POST notes iTUNES VP/Content ROBERT KONDRK, “has also declared war on artists who sign up with TIDAL. A source told us, ‘ROBERT told execs at UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP that RIHANNA and other TIDAL artists’ music would not be promoted as featured artists on iTUNES if they put exclusive music out on TIDAL’.”
The source also told the paper, “that after RIHANNA’s song ‘American Oxygen’ debuted on TIDAL, there were technical problems with her music on iTUNES. The source explained, ‘RIHANNA’s songs were scrambled and were out of commission for periods of time’.”
A spokesman for APPLE also told the paper, “That’s not true,” on the claim RIHANNA’s songs were deliberately scrambled, but declined to comment on the other claims.
Source:
