Musicians including Beyoncé and Madonna show support for rapper as he overhauls service designed to make more money for artists 
 
 He has sold 100m records, founded a business empire worth upwards of $520m (£350m) and married Beyoncé. Now, Jay Z, backed by a roll call of A-list friends, is fronting the relaunch of a music streaming website heralded as the first real challenger to Spotify. 
 
 Kanye West, Rihanna, Coldplay, Madonna, Alicia Keys, Beyoncé and more threw their weight behind the rapper at a press ­conference last night where he unveiled the new look for Tidal, a streaming site originally launched by Norwegian firm Aspiro in October 2014 and acquired for $56m earlier this month by a company controlled by the music mogul. 
 
 It is planned that Tidal will compete with Spotify and upcoming streaming services from Apple and YouTube by offering exclusive music from prominent artists, including studio sessions and demo tracks, while giving them new ways to communicate with fans. 
 
 Musicians including Beyoncé, Deadmau5, Nicki Minaj and Jack White replaced their Twitter profile pictures with blank blue images while tweeting the #TIDALforALL hashtag ahead of the event in a show of online support. 
 
 “Together, we can turn the tide and make music history. Start by turning your profile picture blue,” Kanye West tweeted ahead of the event. 
 
 Alicia Keys described Tidal as “the first artist-owned global music and entertainment platform” and promised to “create a better service and a better experience for both fans and artists … where we will deliver exclusive experiences that cannot be found anywhere else”. 
 
 Tidal’s key selling point so far has been its “lossless” quality streams, for which the company charges a monthly subscription of £19.99 – double its rivals. It is available in 31 countries, with six more to follow by the end of June. 
 
 By the end of 2014, Tidal had 500,000 paying users. It will launch a £9.99 subscription model alongside its existing one. 
 
 Under Jay Z, Tidal’s strategy will include encouraging artists to lobby their labels to “window” new releases for at least a week, meaning they will be exclusive to Tidal for that period. 
 
 He told Billboard: “We didn’t like the direction music was going and thought maybe we could get in and strike an honest blow. Will artists make more money? Even if it means less profit for our bottom line, absolutely. That’s easy for us. We can do that. Less profit for our bottom line, more money for the artist; fantastic.” 
 
 The company is not alone in this desire. Apple is planning to relaunch its currently US-only Beats Music streaming service worldwide later in 2015, and has been courting artists and labels intensely to secure exclusives. 
 
 With Google also waving its own chequebook – it struck a deal for 
 
 a month-long exclusive on Take That’s latest album for its Google Play Music service in November 2014 – there is set to be a bidding war for new albums by prominent artists. 
 
 Spotify has signed its own exclusives in the past with artists including ­Metallica and Led Zeppelin, and remains ­defiant that its scale – it is the biggest subscription streaming service, with 15 million paying customers and another 45 million free users – will ensure it does not miss out on new albums for long. 
 
 “We want all the world’s music on our service, but there has been sporadic windowing on Spotify since it was ­created. We know from experience that these things happen, they come and go,” said Spotify’s head of communications and public policy, Jonathan Prince. 
 
 “We continue to grow exponentially by delivering a great product for our users and the artists they love. Recent releases by Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Madonna and others show how critical it is for artists and labels to be on Spotify for their own success.” 
 
 Spotify is currently under pressure from some major music labels, ­Universal Music Group in particular, to convert more of its free users into ­paying ­subscribers. Some artists – including ­Taylor Swift, who pulled her music from Spotify – have also criticised the free streaming model. 
 
 Tidal will sidestep those arguments, since it does not have a free tier, a ­strategy also likely to be adopted by Apple. 
 
 Swift’s back catalogue is already available on Tidal, as it is on all other paid-for streaming services. “This has never been changed. Big Machine Records [Swift’s label] believes music has value and we do not believe Taylor’s music should be made available for free,” a spokesman for Swift said. 
 
 Not everyone is convinced that Tidal will revolutionise the music streaming market. 
 
 “This isn’t about transforming the streaming market, or suddenly taking it into the mainstream. I think Tidal is aiming to compete around, rather than with, Spotify,” Mark Mulligan of music industry consultancy MIDiA Research told the Guardian. 
 
 “It is aiming for a higher spending slice of the music ­aficionado market. Primarily this is about opening up new market segments, and the positioning is smart: it is creating an aspirational brand, which ties in well with the urban music community.” 
 
 Exclusivity is key to that ­ambition. But, despite Jay Z’s impressive ­contacts book, labels will make the final ­decisions on such deals. For now, at least. One report ahead of Tidal’s relaunch suggested that Jay Z sees the company as a modern day music ­equivalent of United Artists, the ­Hollywood studio founded in 1919 by a group of actors and directors as a way to control their own output. 
 
 Tidal’s long-term plan may be to sign big artists as their label deals run out, in which case it could become a rival not just to Apple and Spotify, but to major labels Universal, Sony and Warner. ||||| Sprint Purchases 33 Percent Stake in Tidal 
 
 Sprint has acquired a 33 percent stake in Jay Z's streaming service Tidal, the two companies announced today (Jan. 23). A source familiar with the matter tells Billboard that the purchase was for $200 million and that Jay and each of the company's two dozen artist-owners will remain part owners. 
 
 As part of the deal, Tidal will become available to Sprint's 45 million retail customers, while the companies will partner for exclusives from its artists, according to a press release. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure joins Tidal's board of directors. 
 
 "Jay saw not only a business need, but a cultural one, and put his heart and grit into building TIDAL into a world-class music streaming platform that is unrivaled in quality and content," Claure said in a statement. "The passion and dedication that these artist-owners bring to fans will enable Sprint to offer new and existing customers access to exclusive content and entertainment experiences in a way no other service can.” 
 
 Another aspect of the partnership includes the creation of a "dedicated marketing fund," which a source says will have an annual budget of $75 million solely for the artist initiatives and exclusives. For those who already subscribe to Tidal, estimated to be around one million people, there will be no change in the existing service. 
 
 "Sprint shares our view of revolutionizing the creative industry to allow artists to connect directly with their fans and reach their fullest, shared potential," said Jay Z in a statement. "Marcelo understood our goal right away and together we are excited to bring Sprint’s 45 million customers an unmatched entertainment experience." 
 
 Tidal's and Sprint's relationship dates back to the March 2015 U.S. launch of the company, when a report from the New York Post indicated that Sprint had acquired a stake in the company. At the time, Sprint walked back any formal deal, only alluding to negotiations "to determine how to best to make the service available to its customers... We are working together in partnership for the vision of the common cause of reestablishing the value of music, it is NOT a financial investment or exclusive partnership." 
 
 Those discussions seem to have resulted in today's announcement, which also comes days after Norwegian media outlet Dagens Næringsliv published a lengthy report claiming that Tidal had been inflating subscriber numbers, while rumors of an acquisition, possibly by Apple, have been growing for months. Jay Z bought Tidal from Swedish company Aspiro AB for $56 million in 2015. ||||| Tidal, the high-definition music streaming service acquired by rapper and music mogul Jay-Z, is gearing up for its official relaunch under new ownership later today, and it will be doing so by reportedly making a move to snag new releases by some of the biggest musicians of the moment including Kanye West, Madonna and Daft Punk, ahead of rival services like Spotify and Beats. 
 
 The company has been sending out invites for a press conference being held at 5pm Eastern time today, in which Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter “will announce a commitment to a new direction for the music industry from both a creative and business perspective.” While there is not much detail being provided officially, unofficially we’ve heard that the company will be using the event to confirm the first big-name artists to stream music exclusively on the Tidal platform. 
 
 What might those artists be doing on Tidal? Not an ordinary streaming deal, it seems. Over the weekend, the Swedish blog Breakit reported — citing sources close to the deal — that Tidal’s plan of attack will be to ink first-window deals with the artists, where Tidal would get first releases of tracks from big-name artists ahead of any other digital streaming services. This would be exclusive, but only for a period: Spotify, Deezer and others would eventually also get these tracks, but only later. 
 
 This is not unlike how services like Netflix often get films after they have gone through cinema and DVD release windows, and subsequently what Vessel is trying to do to upend that. 
 
 For those of you who browse social networks or follow music news, the list of artists gathering around Tidal shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise: a swathe of big-name musicians — including Madonna, Kanye West, Beyonce, Arcade Fire, Calvin Harris and others are using the #tidalforall hashtag on sites like Twitter and Instagram, as well as sending out messages or just changing their profile to a turquoise blue color to support the service. 
 
 It’s a pretty strong bet that the artists that all started sending these out around midnight Eastern time will be among those involved in some way in the news today. 
 
 It would also follow on the heels of Taylor Swift’s catalog coming to Tidal last week — minus her 1989 album. This is not an exclusive deal but lays the groundwork for other Swift music to make its way to Tidal first. 
 
 What’s the pull for these artists? It’s partly the Jay-Z connection. His Roc Nation agency works with a long list of musicians to provide publishing, management, label and other services, with Tidal becoming yet another string on Roc Nation’s bow as a one-stop music distribution shop. 
 
 On the other hand, from what we understand, Tidal is also offering a more attractive set of terms to musicians than other streaming services — often agreeing to payouts of twice as much as its rivals. (We’ve asked to see if we can get more concrete numbers to support the claim.) 
 
 With many artists complaining that digital music is not providing decent enough returns, the later of these could be a deal maker for Tidal. The big question is whether artists are willing to make the bet on payouts-per-stream over that of visibility: right now Tidal has only 35,000 subscribers paying $19.99 per month across the markets in which it is active, which include the U.S. and UK. By comparison, Spotify noted 15 million paying subscribers in January of this year. Tidal also offers a standard definition service at $9.99. 
 
 While Jay-Z won agreement this month from Aspiro shareholders to buy Tidal for $54 million, the shares are not due to transfer until mid-April, we understand.
– It looks like a good day for Jay-Z: Sprint is buying a 33% stake in his music-streaming service, Tidal. Billboard reports the deal was for $200 million. Under the terms, Jay-Z and other big-name celebs—including Beyonce, Madonna, and Kanye West—will remain part-owners. Sprint, meanwhile, will be able to provide exclusive music to its customers. The deal may be a life-saver for Tidal, which has been struggling to compete with Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify, reports the New York Times. Its holding company lost about $28 million in 2015. (Jay-Z maintains that having artists own the site is what sets Tidal apart.)