Jay Z's Tidal Is More Popular With Black Users

Tidal, Jay Z’s music streaming service, recently announced that it had passed 3 million paying subscribers.

That number was helped by high-profile exclusives from Kanye West and Rihanna, both of whose albums have since made their way to other streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. But the exclusive windows did their job: getting people to download Tidal. Kanye’s release, in particular, rocketed Tidal to the top of the App Store download charts.

And there is one demographic where Tidal is doing exceptionally well, according to data provided to Business Insider by SurveyMonkey Intelligence, SurveyMonkey's new third-party app insights platform.

In March, 2016, analysts found that 45% of US Tidal app users identified as black, compared to 16% on Spotify, and 20% on Pandora.

White US users did not have as much of a presence on the service, comprising only 18% of users, compared to 40% on both Spotify and Pandora.

Here is a demographic chart of major streaming services provided by SurveyMonkey Intelligence:

Here is how the services compare in terms of paid subscribers:

Tidal’s customer acquisition strategy, since it relaunched a year ago, seems to hinge on securing exclusives from blockbuster artists like Kanye and Rihanna, both of whom also own an undisclosed stake in Tidal.

The company has had its fair share of drama. Jay Z is said to be readying a "giant lawsuit" against the former owners who sold him Tidal. He is seeking to get back something in the region of $15 million, according to Music Business Worldwide. Jay Z reportedly believes the worldwide subscriber number (503,000) was misleading.

Tidal has also seen a string of high-profile departures from the company since it was acquired by Jay Z. Last month, Tidal fired its CFO and COO on the same day, after previously losing two CEOs and a slew of other executives.

Along with Kanye and Rihanna, other musicians who owned a stake in Tidal at launch included Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire (Win Butler and Regine Chassagne), Beyonce, Calvin Harris, Chris Martin, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J. Cole, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Shawn “Jay Z” Carter, and Usher.

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