Well, this is embarrassing. If you're Jay Z, that is.
The rapper launched his new streaming service Tidal last month to huge fanfare, enlisting some of the biggest names in music - from Rihanna to Chris Martin, Kanye West and Madonna - to appear in an ad pledging their allegiance to the service, which aims to rival Spotify but give artists a bigger cut of the profits.
However, as The Guardian reports, the Tidal app has fallen out of the Top 700 in the US iPhone download chart less than a month after its launch.
In comparison, services like Pandora and Spotify are at numbers 3 and 4 respectively in the US iPhone revenue charts.
A number of musicians have spoken out against the service, including Lily Allen, Mumford & Sons and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard - who told Stereogum that it was a 'missed opportunity' to support smaller artists at the expense of further lining superstars' pockets.
"If I had been Jay Z, I would have brought out 10 artists that were underground or independent and said, ‘These are the people who are struggling to make a living in today’s music industry. Whereas this competitor streaming site pays this person 15 cents for X amount of streams, that same amount of streams on my site, on Tidal, will pay that artist this much.’," he said. "I think they totally blew it by bringing out a bunch of millionaires and billionaires and propping them up onstage and then having them all complain about not being paid."
