Jay Z’s Tidal service crashes on iPhone’s Top Downloads chart

Just two weeks after Jay Z’s recently acquired streaming service Tidal broke into the US iPhone Top 20 Download chart, it has fallen out of the top 700.

Today Tidal’s app sits at #788 in the US, and in its home country of Sweden – where its parent company Aspiro is head quartered – it sits at #987. It has fallen out of the Top 1000 chart in Australia.

Source: App ranking firm App Annie

The crash in popularity follows a less-than smooth launch. Tidal was introduced and re-introduced into 35 markets – including Australia – with its17 artist shareholdersincluding Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Daft Punk and Jack White, signing a declaration onstage in Manhattan. However the launch was met with a backlash from potential customers, artists and industry figures. Lily Allen, Deathcab for Cutie and Mumford & Sons voiced concerns for emerging artists and the state of piracy. “People are going to swarm back to pirate sites in droves,” said Lily Allen. Veteran producer Steve Albini balked at Tidal’s pricing tier for its lossless audio quality format in an interview withVulture: “If you want your music to play at the push of a button, convenience is going to trump sound quality 100% of the time”.

Australian users are paying $23.99 a month for Tidal’s “25 million-plus tracks, 75,000 music videos, and curated editorial articles, features and interviews written by experts" – more than double the monthly price for a premium subscription to market leaders Rdio and Spotify.

Tidal does have a standard definition,$9.99/month service, which Australian users have also been offered, but as it currently stands, Tidal’s rivals are miles ahead in terms of popularity. Today, Spotify is the 18th most popular iPhone app in the US, #11 in its native Sweden and #20 in Australia, having moved up two spots from yesterday. Rdio is currently ranked at #592 in both the US and Australia, Pandora is #7 in the US and #63 in Australia and even Beats Music, which will be rebranded when it enters the market in June, is ranked at #60 in the US.

JayZ's company Project Panther Bidcobought Tidal’s parent company Aspiro for US$56 million last month. Since then,Tidal’s CEO Andy Chen departed ways with the service and a reported 25 staffershave been axed with Tidalcategorising the firings as “redundancies” and “streamlining resources.”Chen'sreplacement is Peter Tonstad. Tonstad was CEO of Tidal’s parent company Aspiro for two years before Chen joined the company.