Beyoncé’s Lemonade has done more than just generate massive streaming numbers for streaming music service Tidal; it has also helped pad the company’s subscriber count. Since the launch of Bey’s latest blockbuster record, Tidal subscribers are up 1.2 million, according to The New York Times.
That number does include new free trial members, so the big question is whether or not they’ll stick around. But even if a majority of people who have signed up to stream Lemonade don’t decide to renew, it’s a significant bump in listenership for the service, which said it had around 3 million users in March.
Songs from Lemonade have been streamed over 300 million times on the service so far, a number which, until Drake’s Apple Music exclusive Views launched, made it the biggest streaming debut in history. Lemonade is still currently No. 2 on that list, but with less than half of Drake’s first week play count.
Regardless of who won this battle, the war between Tidal and Apple Music on exclusive releases looks to continue for the foreseeable future, with Apple Music getting the much-anticipated new Chance the Rapper mixtape Coloring Book this week. Whether or not that is the best method to boost subscriber count remains to be seen, but, at least with massive releases from the world’s biggest artists, it seems to be working just fine, at least for Tidal.
Time will tell whether these sorts of releases will make Tidal into an actual streaming competitor, especially when all the free trials run out — Spotify has over 30 million users, and Apple Music has 13 million as of this article. It should also be noted that both Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Drake’s Views were made available for paid download on iTunes, as part of a play to curb the piracy which ran wild with Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo.
