Tidal Ramps Up Exclusives With New Arsenal Deal

CBx Vibe:Heard About Us” The Carters

  • Tidal & Arsenal FC inked a $1.16M partnership
  • Arsenal raked in more than $500 million dollars in 2016/17 season

Tidal just inked a $1.16 million deal with Arsenal Football Club to create exclusive content that merges the worlds of soccer and music. The effort aims to propel their commitment to emerging talent. Will the game plan help usher Tidal out of hot water amid fierce streaming competition?

Why This Matters: Tidal continuously catapults itself into the spotlight with exclusive content that for loyal subscribers it’s all the rave. While on the other hand for disgruntled consumers it means rushing to renew a cancelled subscription. Arsenal fans with a platinum or gold Arsenal membership for the 2018-19 season will receive a free six-month subscription to Tidal’s Hi-Fi service.

Take this past weekend, the streaming service released Beyoncé and Jay Z’s joint project “Everything Is Love” exclusively on Tidal. The roll out included a video for the single “Apeshit,” the album, and the release of “Salud!,” a song that doesn’t appear on the power couple’s record.

“Everything Is Love” was not immediately available on other streaming services, causing a horde of fans to flock to Tidal. Hit Monday and  “Everything is Love” became available on both competing platforms Apple (AAPL -0.05%) Music and Spotify (SPOT -0.38%), reigniting discussions surrounding the effectiveness of Tidal’s exclusive model.

Despite high-profile releases like the Carter’s highly-anticipated joint album, Tidal has been accused of resorting to exaggerate subscriber and streaming numbers, the latter resulting in overpaid royalties to artist-owners Beyoncé and Kanye West. Still, Spotify and Apple Music dominate the streaming space.

Grammy-award winner Queen Bey challenged those allegations on “Everything Is Love,” rapping that if she so cared about streaming numbers, she’d put Lemonade on Spotify. The 2016 visual album isn’t available on the competing platform, and is only accessible to download on Apple.

Situational Awareness: The partnership could lure in some of soccer’s 3.5 billion global fans. Arsenal already raked in more than $500 million in revenue during the 2016-17 season. So far at this point the exclusive approach hasn’t advanced Tidal in the streaming race.

CBx Vibe:Heard About Us” The Carters

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