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Kanye West And Kid Cudi Want Apple Music And Tidal To End The ‘Beef’

By Victoria Johnson
Published on: 13:40 PST, Jul 31, 2016

Kid Cudi is joining in on Kanye West’s tweet storm against the rivalry among the streaming giants — Tidal, Apple Music, and Spotify.

Similar to West, the Man on the Moon: The End of Day creator wants to take the capitalism out of music — or at least take out the wealthy individuals who are capitalizing off of it.

“This is why the game is f****d up,” tweeted Cudi with a link to West’s tweet on Sunday (July 31). “All this s**t is wack. Bunch of rich guys on a power trip. This s**t aint about music. Never has. The rich just wanna get richer. Spare me.”

Cudi finished off his tirade of tweets with a somber message. “The art is lost,” it read.

The tweets were a reaction to West’s earlier tweets from Saturday (July 30) claiming that there’s some serious controversy going on between Tidal and Apple Music. But above all else, West says that it’s their rivalry is ruining the music industry.

“The Tidal Apple beef is f*****g up the music game,” read West’s tweet. Afterward, he exclaimed that he wants to get all the big heads on the same phone to quell the friction. This would include Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, Tidal’s owner, Jay Z, Apple Music executive Larry Jackson, Apple affiliates like Jimmy Iovine and rapper Drake and music mogul Scooter Braun along with others. In a later tweet, he also called for Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, to be on the phone as well for the conference call.

“F**k all this d**k swinging contest,” read West’s tweet. “We all gon be dead in 100 Years. Let the kids have the music.”

This is a turn for West, who has been a big supporter of Tidal in the past. In February, the 39-year-old rapper released his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo, exclusively on the platform. Afterward, he claimed that his album would “never never never be on Apple [Music]” or “be for sale” and that consumers would only be able to get it on Tidal. However, this changed a few weeks later when the album showed up for sale on various other platforms including Apple Music.

Although the exclusivity was a major boost for the Tidal that’s constantly rumored to be on the downfall. According to the streaming site, 250 million people streamed The Life of Pablo during the first 10 days of its release. This success followed the exclusive release of Rihanna’s critically-acclaimed ANTI and was soon followed by Beyonce’s widely-popular second visual album, Lemonade. Not to mention, Tidal was (and still is) the only streaming platform to hold Prince’s music collection during the music legend’s untimely death in April.

But despite gaining over 3 million paid subscribers and being on the way to becoming a major player in the streaming service game, there are rumors that Apple is in talks to buy Tidal.

And West is seemingly confirming the rumors that Apple is in talks with Tidal to buy it out. “Apple give Jay his check for Tidal now and stop tying (sic) to act like you Steve,” read another one of West’s tweets.

It’s been a little over a year since Jay Z bought the service from the Swedish company, Aspiro, in March 2015 for $56 million and rebranded the streaming site. The company launched with 16 celebrity stakeholders including Madonna, J. Cole, Nicki Minaj, Usher, Alicia Keys, Chris Martin of Coldplay, and deadmau5. The company’s promise was not only to give quality music to fans but to also give fair royalties to the artists — one of the biggest critiques from music artists about Spotify and Apple Music.

The artists have yet to make a statement on the rumor.

[Photo by David Becker/Getty Images]

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