Tidal jumps to the top of the App Store charts after Kanye West calls for fans to sign up

9 months ago

Kanye West has been at it again on Twitter, and this time his rants have included several mentions of some big names in technology.

As well as asking Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg to invest in him and his ideas, West also implored fans who wanted to hear his new album to sign up for Tidal – the only music service the album is currently streaming on.

They listened. Within a few hours of West tweeting, Tidal had jumped to number one in the US App Store, having been number 259 just one day previously, according to analytics site App Annie.

Number one app in the world is stretching it a little, but it was still a huge jump nonetheless for a service that has struggled to grab new users at a rate it would like. Although it’s unclear how many people actually went the whole way and became subscribers to the service.

Tidal is the streaming service owned by Jay-Z of course, re-launching it last year with a host of music mega-stars as ‘co-owners’, with an “artists first” message that hasn’t exactly struck a cord with consumers given that it came from a group of multi-millionaires.

New user uptake has been steady since, but given that Apple Music came along a few months later and has more than 10 times the customers already, things could be better for the platform and its multiple owners.

But timely shout-outs from the likes of Kanye West might be the way forward, and it appeared to do the trick this time.