JAY-Z and Square CEO Jack Dorsey discussed TIDAL on Twitter Spaces on Monday. Hov sold a majority share in the streaming service to Square earlier in the year for more than $300 million.
During the conference call, JAY discussed the evolution of TIDAL playlists, revealing that he personally selected many of them as his staff tried to automate the process.
“In the beginning, everything was like a super manual. I was making playlists; people were making playlists… we were creating content in-house as we worked on the algorithm,” he explained. “We built and built, and it got really good. And if you play a song now, you can pretty much just let TIDAL fly, and I promise you you’re gonna find new music, new amazing music, that you’ve never heard before.”
Hov claims he got so adept at generating playlists due to the process that he now considers himself a “top tier” curator.
He said, “I’ve found so many songs. My playlist game is A++. I challenge anyone out there; I see a lot of people on this call… but I’m definitely in the top tier of playlist creators.”
TIDAL develops playlists for Verzuz battles, and Jay responded to inquiries about them. The 51-year-old rap entrepreneur claims that playlists are being “actively” curated on a “daily” basis and that this will not change anytime soon.
“I think that because we were solely focused on music and artists, we did things that were just a part of the culture. I guess one of the best examples is the way that we don’t have anything to do with Verzuz, but the way that TIDAL interacts with that… if it’s popular in the culture and it moves in the culture, we want to be nimble enough to react to that,” he said. “Just reacting to anything that’s going on… and we’ll continue to do that.”
During the call, Hov and Dorsey also stated that they intend to grow the platform’s unique content and introduce new methods to assist musicians in achieving “financial freedom.”
