Jay Z to perform rare songs at free NYC concert

Jay Z is breaking out his B-sides to hype his fledgling music streaming service.

The rap mogul announced plans Wednesday to unearth songs he hasn’t performed in a decade — or ever — at a free New York concert titled “Tidal X: Jay Z B-Sides.” The performance will be held May 13 and subscribers can submit a playlist on the service to win tickets.

Jay Z took to Twitter on Sunday to defend Tidal’s slow start. He co-owns the service with Beyonce, Rihanna, Madonna and other artists. He said Tidal currently has 770,000 subscribers.

He wrote: “The iTunes Store wasn’t built in a day. It took Spotify 9 years to be successful. We are here for the long haul.

According to the TIDAL site, Jay will be performing a number of obscure album cuts and exclusives that he pretty much never incorporates into his shows. In order to win tickets, you must first be a TIDAL user, then you must put together and promote a playlist on social media using the hashtag #TIDALXJAYZ.

Obviously there’s nothing wrong with offering exclusive content to paying consumers of a service, but damn Jay. I want to go to this, but I don’t need or want a TIDAL account. Since its relaunch last month, TIDAL has come under fire for a number of reasons, from the steep price of the service, to the insinuation that fans should pay more for music on one service because it will enrich an already wealthy group of artists. The position of the app in the Apple App Store has been held up as proof that the service is a failure, prompting Jay to take to social media this past weekend to defend his investment.

While I have my own issues with this service, I don’t neccessarily think it’s fair to say that it’s a failure after one month. It’s basically still in its infancy and there are alot of things they can do to make it more attractive and fair to users. Whether or not they will do those things remains to be seen. That being said, putting music videos behind a paywall is one of the lamest things you can do on the internet in 2015. And I say that as a fan of Jay Z, not as a blogger who needs content for his site (but really, that too). My point is, the internet is about democratizing content and making fans lives easier, not creating these walled gardens and shutting people out. So how do you do that and still make money? In this particular case, I honestly don’t know, but I don’t own a streaming service.

The concert will be streamed on Tidal.com.

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