Jay-Z launched his music-streaming service, Tidal, less than a month ago. The launch was epic in its craziness and obliviousness of how pretentious everyone looked. Like, Jay-Z, Madonna, Kanye West, Jack White and many more signed some kind of Tidal Manifesto and stood proud of their accomplishment of charging more money for basically the same (if not a substandard) music-streaming product. Well, in the past few weeks, everything has gone to hell. No one likes Tidal, the app isn’t popular at all, Jay-Z is getting terrible press and even Jay’s BFF Kanye has distanced himself from Tidal (Kanye deleted his pro-Tidal tweets).

So what did Jay-Z do? Something he rarely does: he tried to explain himself. He went on a “stream of consciousness” Twitter rant. I’m not going to embed all of the tweets (there are so many), so if you want to see them all, go here. He kept using the hashtag #TidalFacts throughout, but here’s the bulk of Jay-Z’s defense, compiled into two paragraphs:

“Tidal is doing just fine. We have over 770,000 subs. We have been in business less than one month. The iTunes Store wasn’t built in a day. It took Spotify 9 years to be successful… We are here for the long haul. Please give us a chance to grow & get better. There are many big companies that are spending millions on a smear campaign. We are not anti-anyone, we are pro-artist & fan. We made Tidal for fans. We have more than just music. We have video, exclusive concerts, tickets for events early, live sports!…

“Tidal is where artists can give their fans more without the middlemen. Indie artists who want to work directly w/ us keep 100% of their music. “If you don’t want the CEOs all in the videos” haa. Tidal pays 75% royalty rate to ALL artists, writers and producers – not just the founding members on stage. Rich getting richer? Equity values… YouTube $390 billion. Apple $760 billion. Spotify $8 billion. Tidal $60 million. My cousin just moved to Nigeria to discover new talent. Tidal is a global company. We have Tidal X – it supports artists by giving them a platform to connect with their most loyal fans. Tidal is for all. Our actions will speak louder than words. We made Tidal to bring people the best experiences… and to help artists give that to their fans over and over again… We are human (even Daft Punk ha). We aren’t perfect – but we are determined.

[From Jay-Z’s Twitter]

Two things. One, it sounds like Jay is genuinely worried that he made a terrible investment and that the whole thing is blowing up in his face and he won’t be able to sell Tidal for a tidy profit. Two, I like the idea of Tidal more now that he’s explained his mission statement this way, rather than with the awkward, bonkers, celebrity-filled stage in which they all had to sign the Tidal Manifesto or whatever.

Oh, and is there a “smear campaign” against Tidal? I don’t really think there is. I think people were genuinely put off by the launch, but a lot of people still gave Tidal a chance and the sad fact is that people just dislike the app/service.

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