INTERVIEW: ARCADE FIRE'S WILL BUTLER ABOUT STREAMING SERVICE TIDAL FOR BBC 6 MUSIC

There has been lots of talk over the past two weeks about Tidal - Jay Z’s recently acquired high quality audio music streaming service owned by the top tier of the world’s stars (Jay Z, Beyonce, Rihanna, Daft Punk, Madonna, Arcade Fire).

With Jay Z himself taking to Twitter on 26 April writing a series of messages defending Tidal and its turbulent beginnings.

"We are here for the long haul. Please give us a chance to grow & get better," he said.

It has been widely criticised since its launch, for being too expensive and for making the already rich musicians richer.

The idea is that the artists will release exclusive content via Tidal first, driving people to that service, which the artists control.  Their goal is to “create a better service and experience for the user and the artist”.

It’s fair to say it’s been a bit of a shaky start, last week it was revealed it had dropped out of the top 700 apps downloaded from the iTunes store while Spotify, Beats Music and Pandora has seen the number of downloads increase.

There were reports of Jay Z personally calling new subscribers.  It parted ways with its chief executive Andy Chen, who was the CEO of Tidal’s parent company Aspiro when it was purchased in March.
 
Lily Allen and Mumford and Sons were amongst the artists which made comments about it, with Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard saying it was a “wonderful opportunity squandered” and instead of highlighing emerging or struggling musicians saw a “bunch of millionaires and billionaires” onstage “complaining about not being paid”.
 
‘Tidal Rising’ was then put in place to promote the newer artists.

Arcade Fire’s Will Butler was in at 6 Music last week and while he was here I sat down with him to ask him his thoughts.

Win and Regine were the representatives of the band at the launch…but the rest of them are involved too…

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