When an advertisement starts by Kanye West saying “I just thought about like how crazy this is, how this is like the beginning of the new world,” you have to think two things: 1) There’s Kanye spouting off in hyperboles yet again 2) Whatever they are advertising must be extremely important to human existence. Well, it’s number one in this case, as Kanye is talking about collaborator and friend Jay-Z’s new music streaming service Tidal.
Tidal is a curated, subscription-based music service that gives listeners lossless high quality audio and video. After launching in 2014, the company was acquired by Jay-Z’s Project Panther Ltd in 2015. The service has a handful of A-list celebrity owners.
In this Tidal ad we get a bevy of celebrities, from his wife Beyonce, to the rarely seen Daft Punk, Jack White, Calvin Harris, Rihanna, Chris Martin, etc etc ect. That sounds totally cool right? Wrong. Instead of getting a cool advertisement with all of our favourite stars, we get an overstuffed, cocky ad, that tries to make Tidal seem like it’s the best thing ever made. The whole thing is a giant name drop. Watch it for yourself.
My favourite lines:
“Maybe this sounds like a cliche, but it’s about putting art back into the forefront. It’s about bringing humanity back to being an artist, not technology, art, human art,” - Madonna
“This thing, was the thing that everybody wanted, and everyone feared. If these artist can sit in a room together, the game changes forever, and it happened today,” - Jay-Z
“This collaboration feels so egoless, everybody is having a conversation. WE really do have an opportunity to change the way we all experience art,” - Beyonce
While I have no doubt Tidal is going to be successful, I think this advertisement completely missed the mark. It seems much more interested in telling viewers about how it’s going to change art (yeah, sure) than what it’s actually about. The music streaming service market is extremely competitive, and this ad gives me no reason to want to switch over and try out Tidal.
