The streaming service launched as an alternative to Spotify seems to have floundered. In fact, it may even have boosted sales of its rivals 
 
 It seems Tidal has not made the big waves it was hoping for. One month after its launch, the streaming service has already dropped out of the iPhone top 700 download chart in the US. 
 
 The news will be an embarrassment for the service, which launched in March amid a blaze of publicity. Fronted by Jay Z, it was backed by a series of A-list musicians including Madonna, Chris Martin and Beyoncé. 
 
 However, the app has suffered from mixed messages following its launch. Despite claiming to pay artists better royalties than existing services, the abundance of pop megastars used to promote it prompted confusion as to why they deserved even more cash. 
 
 Tidal has suffered from a turbulent launch in other ways. The company’s CEO was removed last week, in what was described as a “streamlining” move. Tidal has since drafted in former consultant for the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, Peter Tonstad, for the role. 
 
 In other streaming news, rival services Pandora and Spotify seem to be surging ahead, respectively occupying the No 3 and No 4 spot on the US iPhone revenue chart. Commentators have noticed how Spotify seems to have been boosted by the Tidal media campaign, despite being one of its key targets. 
 
 Meanwhile, Kanye West, another Tidal backer, has reassured people that the service is not part of the shadowy world-governing organisation known as the Illuminati. Which certainly clears things up. 
 
 ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| When Tidal made its big media push at the end of March, the core message was clear: while other streaming music services like Spotify and Pandora pay a pittance to artists, Tidal offers musicians a better deal. Unfortunately, Tidal also opted to use super stars like Nicki Minaj and Beyonce as spokespersons for the app. The result was the ultimate mixed message: You should feel sorry about how little money Nicki makes. 
 
 DON’T MISS: The same strategy that helped make Jay-Z’s Tidal a disaster is making Apple look brilliant 
 
 Two weeks after Tidal briefly cracked the U.S. iPhone top 20 download chart, the app has crashed out of the top 700. Apparently American consumers have limited empathy towards Beyonce and Nicki. Soon after the launch fiasco, Tidal’s CEO was kicked out in a “streamlining” move. The new CEO Peter Tonstad, a former consultant for the Norwegian Ministry of Environment, has his work cut out for him. 
 
 To make matters worse for Tidal, its main rivals are now surging. On April 20th, Pandora and Spotify occupied positions No. 3 and No. 4 on the U.S. iPhone revenue chart, respectively. This was the first time two music streaming services have hit the top 4 in sales simultaneously. In order to achieve the feat, Pandora and Spotify had to push Candy Crush Saga out of U.S. iPhone top 4 revenue chart, which is a remarkable achievement. 
 
 As a matter of fact, something curious can be seen in Spotify’s download performance right after Tidal media campaign started bashing its allegedly meager payouts. Spotify surged back into the iPad top 40 download chart on March 31st, right when Tidal’s anti-Spotify invective hit its peak in American media. This had not happened since November 2014. 
 
 It looks like Tidal’s attacks on Spotify and Pandora actually managed to increase public awareness of the services, boosting Spotify’s download performance in particular at the end of March. And now, a few weeks later, the combined revenue performance of the two music apps is hitting a new milestone. To add insult to injury, Beats Music has started cracking U.S. iPhone top 20 revenue chart. 
 
 This is the problem with attacking popular apps – negative media coverage often ends up just boosting them. Twitter rode a flurry of mocking or downright hostile news items to mainstream success. Snapchat leveraged sexual panic of US media about naughty photos to becoming a teen obsession. You can’t badmouth a strong app into a decline. In the hyper competitive app market, any media attention buoys apps with genuine consumer appeal. 
 
 Tidal is now facing no fewer than three deep-pocketed rival music apps and they’re all minting money and riding strong momentum. The new CEO must somehow find a way to mop up after the ill-advised March launch and find a way to reposition Tidal in a crowded market… preferably by not trying to make consumers feel bad for multimillionaires. Or giving its rivals extra attention. ||||| 
 
 
 
 As told to Gabby Bess. 
 
 
 
 Styling by Renelou Padora 
 
 Grooming by Ibn Jasper 
 
 Photo Assistant: Jay Carroll 
 
 
 
 Kanye wears a Duke's vintage t-shirt, Kanye West x Adidas Originals shirt and vintage military pants. Nori necklace is his own. 
 
 
 
 Read more about our American Dream issue here. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I was speaking at a fashion award ceremony -- I gave the head of Milk Studios, Mazdack Rassi, the first award of the night -- and I talked about the concept of "the fashion insider." I believe that everyone is a fashion insider, because it's illegal to be naked. But in all seriousness, the fashion world can say, "Yo, you know what I mean: the inside insiders." I saw this article that asked, "Should Kanye leave fashion to the professionals?" That question is really ignorant, in a way, because the second I sell my first T-shirt or my first shoe, doesn't that make me a professional? And when you sit down with Riccardo Tisci at the Louvre and he pitches the idea of you wearing a leather kilt, which could be considered by all of your gangbanging friends as some sort of a dress or skirt, at that point you are now a part of the fashion world. You have paid your dues to be an insider. I paid my dues when I had to wear a kilt in Chicago, and friends would say, "What's your boy got on?" But there are warriors that have killed people in kilts in the past. Who gets to decide what's hard and what's not hard? When I saw this kilt, I liked it. I was into it. It looked fresh to me. I felt creative; I didn't feel limited by some perception.It's funny to be so famous and noted for one thing, and to have so many people try to box you out of another form of art, even if you've proven you're an artist of one form. My goal isn't to "break through the fashion world;" my goal is to make usable sculpture. My goal is to paint. My goal is to be as close to a five-year-old, or a four-year-old, or a three-year-old, as possible. If a three-year-old says, "I like the color orange," he's not giving an explanation to an entire world that can give him a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down on whether or not he should like the color orange. I don't care about the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down. Fashion is something that's in my heart to do -- in my spirit. There's no world that can stop me from what I love. Not the rap world, not the fashion world, not theworld. But it hurt me as a human being to see that article written, with the amount of work that's there and the potential and what II will eventually do. But behind bravery and courage is the ability to brace for pain, not the idea of never having pain or trying to avoid pain. Bravery and courage is walking into pain and knowing that something better is on the other side. I heard this quote from Steve Jobs: someone came up to him when he was working on something and said, "Hey, just do it. It will be easy." And he said, "Wait a second. Anything halfway good ismedium hard." There's no easy way out. Just choose what you want to focus on. Right now, over 70 percent of my focus is on apparel. I haven't even given myof clothing yet. We're still on mixtapes.When I was working at the Gap at 15, I don't think I had any desire to actually make clothes, but I always felt like that's what I wanted to be around. I loved the fabrics, I loved the colors, I loved the proportions. Abercrombie was too expensive for me and the Gap was too expensive for me. Even though I worked at the Gap, I didn't get enough hours to get a discount because I was a part-time employee, because I went to high school. At that time I focused mostly on painting and basketball, but then I took two steps away from my potential career as an artist. I had scholarships to Saint Xavier, the Art Institute of Chicago -- I went to the American Academy of Art on an arts scholarship, but I stepped back from that to paint in a different way. I chose to paint sonically. To chop samples in a Warhol-type way. I just looked at civilization: I'd have an assignment to do an ink drawing that took me two weeks, three weeks, and I'd show it to my friends and they'd say, "Cool. My friend can draw. Now let's go play ball. Let's go downtown and talk to some girls." But when I'd work on a track, I'd work on it for just that afternoon -- chop up a sample, put some drums to it. And if my friends liked it, we'd make a tape of it and play it all the way downtown. We'd listen to it all night, keep rewinding it. I made a decision at that point to focus on painting with sound instead of painting visually. I loved music. I loved it more than I love it now. But I think that can happen with anything. You can live in New York for 10 years and say, "I now want to move to San Francisco." It's just harder for me to do music now, period. It's easier for people who focus on it all day and who are younger in their concept of what they want to do with it. I am not what I would consider truly a musician. I am an inventor. I am an innovator.was an innovation.was an innovation. The song "Niggas in Paris" was an innovation. "Only One" was an innovation. "FourFiveSeconds" was an innovation. I care about innovating. I don't care about capitalizing off of something that we've seen or heard a thousand times. I'm not a capitalist in that way. I'm an innovator. That's my job. I like two things: I like innovating and I like making things better. It's not that I always have to invent things that are new. Sometimes I can take something that's there and attempt to make a better version and that's what gets me off. Bottom line.I heard a comment -- a joke -- about the Tidal press conference being an Illuminati moment. If there was actually an Illuminati, it would be more like the energy companies. Not celebrities that gave their life to music and who are pinpointed as decoys for people who really run the world. I'm tired of people pinpointing musicians as the Illuminati. That's ridiculous. We don't run anything; we're. We're the face of brands. We have to compromise what we say in lyrics so we don't lose money on a contract. Madonna is in her 50s and gave everything she had to go up on an award show and get choked by her cape. She's judged for who she adopts. Fuck all of this sensationalism. We gave you our lives. We gave you our hearts. We gave you our opinions!Let's just tap back into the real world for a second -- we can have children. Let's be thankful. We can raise our kids, let's be thankful. But how about we raise our kids in a truthful world, not a world based on brands and concepts of perception? Perception is not reality. When I look in North's eyes, I'm happy about every mistake I've ever made. I'm happy that I fought to bring some type of reality to this world we choose to stay in right now, driven by brands and corporations.I also love people being inspired to follow their dreams, because I think people are oppressed by smoke and mirrors, by perception. There isn't an example of a living celebrity that has more words formed against him, but just a little self-belief can go a long way. I think the scariest thing about me is the fact that I just believe. I believe awesome is possible and I believe that beauty is important. When I say "beauty," what's your current definition of beauty? When I think beauty, I think of an untouched forest, only created by God's hand. I think of a gray sky that separates the architecture from the background and creates these amazing photographs because you don't have to block the sun above you when you're taking the photograph. I think beauty is important and it's undermined by our current corporate culture. When you think about the corporate office, you don't see the importance of beauty. I think all colors are beautiful and in a corporate world only one color is. But another thing is that I believe money is important. I think that artists have been brainwashed to look at money as a bad thing, and it's not. I think they're equally important in our current civilization.When I was 10 years old I lived in China, and at the time they used to come up to me and rub my face to see if the color would rub off. It was really fucked up, but I feel like it was preparing me for a world perspective that a lot of my friends who never got a chance to travel didn't get. Now my perspective, a lot of times, is so much wider than someone who's limited to the concept of any particular so-called world that's not the real world. I take into account all of what's happening, from the boom of business in San Francisco to the poverty in Africa -- and that is wide perspective. When I was in fifth grade in China, when kids would come up to me and touch my face, it was like they had never seen a black person before, but that was a while ago. That was 20 years ago and of course we've come a long way now. That's not the current state of mind. On "Never Let Me Down" I rapped, "Racism's still alive, they just be concealing it," but for the next generation that's not necessarily true. Racism is something that's taught, but for the new post-Internet, post-iPad kids that have been taught to swipe before they read, it's just not going to affect them as much. They realize that we are one race. We're different colors -- my cousins and I are different shapes and we're all from one family. We're all from one family called the human race. It's simple as that. This race is up against some interesting things -- poverty, war, global warming, classism -- and we have to come together to beat this. It'll only be as a collective that we can beat this, and we can. We can create a better world for ourselves.People have asked why I don't speak out -- on social media, for example -- about events in this country. The way I see it, it's not about a post on social media from me when. There's people in Chicago dying. There's people all across the globe dying for no reason! There's people who'll never have the opportunity tofor terrible, nonsensical reasons. I care about people. I care about society. I care about people being inspired. I care about people believing in themselves, because that's the scariest thing. The modern population cannot be controlled by the system -- they break the system.One time I was at the dentist's office and I was given nitrous gas and I was vibing out -- I guess that's my version of Steve Jobs and his LSD trip -- when I had this first thought:? And then I thought,. What's the key to happiness?. What do you want in life? When you give someone something, should they give you something in return? No. We don't have to expect to be compensated by the person we give to. Just give. I'm a Christian so I'll speak in Christian terms: God will give you tenfold. Then I said in my mind -- I'm still under the gas and getting my teeth cleaned --. And I immediately corrected myself. I said,. I came out of the gas and had a completely new attitude on everything. It's fine to not get credit for everything; it's almost better. For the amount of things that I really want to do, it can only work if I'm credited for about 20 percent of them. Because if I'm really credited for the amount of things that I'm going to do and what I want to do, it's just too much. The reward is in the deed itself. The times that I've looked like a crazy person -- when I was screaming at an interviewer or screaming from the stage -- all I was screaming was, "Help me to help more! I've given all I've got. I've gone into fucking debt.. But if I had a little bit more opportunity, I could give so much more." That's what I was screaming for. Help me to help more. ||||| The buzzwords were many, issued from the stage throughout last week's curiously memorable and well-covered media event announcing the new Tidal music-streaming service: notions of revolution, of changing the status quo and upending the system. 
 
 As rhetoric regarding the "future of music" rang from the podium, a billion-dollar club of Tidal stakeholders-artists including Beyoncé and husband Jay Z, Jack White, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Rihanna and Madonna stood side by side onstage in New York. Flanked by Daft Punk members in their robot costumes and Deadmau5 donning a giant mouse head, singer Alicia Keys stated with furrow-browed gravitas that with the launch of Tidal, we were witnessing "a moment that will forever change the course of music history." 
 
 After a little more idealism, they all signed a document as though they were leading the Second Continental Congress. 
 
 Purchased by Jay Z with minority owners including three major labels (Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group) and undisclosed others, Tidal was born as a Swedish high-fidelity streaming company called Aspiro. The rebranding puts it as the newest player in a field occupied by competitors including the market leader Spotify, which has 15 million subscribers and 60 million users. 
 
 Along with the soon-to-be unveiled reboot of the Apple-owned Beats Music, which will be integrated into iTunes, Microsoft's XBox Music, Google Music, perennial underdogs Rdio and Rhapsody and YouTube's forthcoming Music Key streaming service, it's a crowded marketplace. That's especially true considering most music content can be heard for free through YouTube. 
 
 On a broad scale, however, Keys and Jay Z had a point. This year the industry is going all-in on a so-called streaming future of music consumption. Just as the major labels abandoned vinyl and cassettes for compact discs and were forced to adapt to MP3 files, they're now committed to the no-muss, no-fuss cloud. 
 
 What's less publicized is that they're doing so through deals that leverage their valuable library of music licenses for equity stake in the companies. The three majors own approximately 20% of Spotify. If Google were to buy the service for $10 billion, for example, the labels would earn $2 billion. The musicians making the content, however, would be entitled to nothing. 
 
 What is Jay Z's Tidal? It's the first-ever artist-owned music-streaming service, with the goal of getting artists properly compensated for their music. The Times’ Christy Khoshaba reports. What is Jay Z's Tidal? It's the first-ever artist-owned music-streaming service, with the goal of getting artists properly compensated for their music. The Times’ Christy Khoshaba reports. See more videos 
 
 All these services offer a nearly identical product and seek the same goal: to convince a generation of music fans that has never paid for music and whose ears are used to densely compressed music files that they're insulting both the artist and the art. Tidal's declared aim: to deliver high-quality sound, exclusive music, inventive playlists and editorial content to music fans. On Saturday, for example, Beyoncé debuted an exclusive video that captures her behind a grand piano singing a beautiful ballad. It was shot with a hand-held camera by Jay Z. 
 
 Such exclusives underscore a more crucial goal: Tidal must convince at least a fraction of the 97% of consumers who don't pay for a streaming service that subscribing to a premium $20-a-month platform (or $10 basic plan) is the ethically responsible thing to do. 
 
 But if the online backlash is to be believed, somebody's doing it wrong — but not the fans. A Twitter user who goes by @spursfan1975 captured the essence of the fan response: "Tidal — a business venture to help rich musicians get even richer. Cue a rise in music piracy instead!!!" By the weekend, the backlash was represented by the trending #TidalforNoOne hashtag. Next time Jay Z, Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Regine Chassagne and Jason Aldean pitch something for the good of starving artists, they probably shouldn't do it while in a mansion holding Champagne flutes and toasting their gold-leafed good fortune. 
 
 Compared with the fraction of a penny that the content providers (also known as rights holders, or "musicians") earn per spin, the divide is apparent. According to Spotify Artists, a website that explains the company's payment system, the most recently calculated average "per-stream" payout to rights holders was between $0.006 and $0.0084. 
 
 That's not much, which is one reason why Taylor Swift pulled her music from Spotify and penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal at the end of 2014. "Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for," she wrote. 
 
 Directing her ire at Spotify's free service, which includes short commercial breaks, she added, "It's my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is." Swift's absence on Tidal's stage was notable. Her catalog is, however, present on the service, which itself amounts to tacit approval. 
 
 Despite her music's presence, though, Jay Z's declaration of significance is outlandish. It's also unsupportable. Tidal, which boasts only 500,000-plus subscribers, is hardly yet worth paying for, even if the sound quality is indeed remarkable. In fact, the quality is strikingly good, filled with a depth and sonic range as close to compact-disc quality as I've ever heard from a stream. 
 
 The reason: Tidal streams rich, CD-quality sound through a lossless audio format. On the right system, the difference is obvious. Still, it's hard to fathom anyone other than wealthiest 1% — or those of us with expense accounts to pay for such luxuries — buying in. 
 
 As such, Tidal isn't a revolution in anything other than artistic chutzpuh. The service has a feel of a shiny new Planet Hollywood on the first weekend of operation. Or as another Twitter critic described the service as it is now, "Tidal is just a Spotify copy for rich people." It offers a similar volume of choices but does so with an interface that's less intuitive than either Spotify or Beats. 
 
 What none of the artists onstage seemed to understand — and that the labels want you to forget — is that we don't need their 16-person "insurgency" to enjoy music. We don't need Tidal, Beats Music, Spotify or iTunes. If I really want to support an artist, you know what I do? I buy direct, see if they sell music on Bandcamp or wait to spend the money at the tour merch table. ||||| Welcome to the April 13, 2015 edition of Outrage Watch, HitFix's (almost) daily rundown of all the things folks are peeved about in entertainment. Today's top story: Mumford & Sons want nothing to do with Tidal. 
 
 In a new interview with The Daily Beast, the Grammy-winning rock band greeted the mention of Jay Z's much-ballyhooed new artist-owned streaming service -- which has the backing of such music superstars as Madonna, Beyonce, Jack White and Rihanna -- with "a series of loud fart sounds" before being slammed further by frontman Marcus Mumford, who told the website: 
 
 “We wouldn’t have joined it anyway, even if they had asked. We don’t want to be tribal. ...A band of our size shouldn’t be complaining. And when they say it’s artist-owned, it’s owned by those rich, wealthy artists.” Or as guitarist Winston Marshall called them: "New school fucking plutocrats.” 
 
 Wait, is that a compliment? 
 
 [The Daily Beast] 
 
 Want more? There's plenty of indignation to go around. See below for a full roundup of today's kerfuffles. 
 
 Outraged: Madonna haters 
 
 Target: Madonna 
 
 Why: Madonna's awkward onstage kiss with Drake at Coachella on Sunday unleashed the Madonna-bashing hordes on social media, with some even going so far as to imply that the "Rebel Heart" boss sexually assaulted the Toronto rapper. 
 
 It isn't okay that @Madonna kissed @Drake without consent. We'd be mad if a male did it do a female. She owes Drake an apology. — Cassie Fambro Byrd (@CassieFambro) April 13, 2015 
 
 Would you still be laughing if #Madonna was a guy and Drake was a girl? I seriously doubt it http://t.co/h1BE09V5dO pic.twitter.com/AlTxRRZK8L — Rachel Moss (@rachelmoss_) April 13, 2015 
 
 Drake consents to one thing, Madonna does something else & people are determined to blame him anyway. Victim blaming never changes. — Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) April 13, 2015 
 
 I hope #Madonna and Drake planned that long stage kiss. Otherwise that would be, like, erm, sexual assault...no? What do I know? — Elnathan John (@elnathan) April 13, 2015 
 
 And my personal favorite: 
 
 I hope #Madonna and Drake planned that long stage kiss. Otherwise that would be, like, erm, sexual assault...no? What do I know? — Elnathan John (@elnathan) April 13, 2015 
 
 Not a lot, sounds like. 
 
 Outraged: Twitter, "The View" co-host Rosie Perez 
 
 Target: Gwyneth Paltrow 
 
 Why: The Oscar-winning actress and much-reviled GOOP guru took a lot of heat on social media over the weekend for accepting a challenge to live on a food budget of $29 a week -- i.e. the amount afforded to each person living on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Her tweet: 
 
 This is what $29 gets you at the grocery store—what families on SNAP (i.e. food stamps) have to live on for a week. pic.twitter.com/OZMPA3nxij — Gwyneth Paltrow (@GwynethPaltrow) April 9, 2015 
 
 Along with TIME contributor Darlena Cunha -- who headlined her piece "Sorry, Gwyneth Paltrow, Poverty Tourism Is Gross" -- Gwyneth became the target of scorn from both Perez ("I find it offensive," she said on Monday's "View") and, of course, all the haters on Twitter: 
 
 Vast difference living on food stamps for 1 week knowing you've a safetynet of millions, and that being your life every day @GwynethPaltrow — THE SPIRITUAL SLOB (@spiritualslob) April 12, 2015 
 
 its so cool how celebs (gwyneth paltrow) can challenge themselves to live off a food stamp budget like its a game or something — julianne knight (@jul_knight) April 12, 2015 
 
 Maybe instead of making a scene living as a poor, Gwyneth Paltrow could've donated 1/100 of her $280M net worth to food stamp families. — chels - queso queen (@chelsea_elisa) April 12, 2015 
 
 Valid criticisms, and yet somehow I'm more offended by this sunny TV Guide tweet: 
 
 Good news, food stamp recipients: Gwyneth Paltrow feels your pain! http://t.co/k0UnbnY44V pic.twitter.com/ffo8fwy6F1 — TV Guide (@TVGuide) April 10, 2015 
 
 Take heart, the working poor! Gwyneth is stooping to your level for a whole week! 
 
 [h/t The Wrap] 
 
 Outraged: Lindsay Lohan (allegedly) 
 
 Target: Mother Dina Lohan 
 
 Why: According to TMZ, the England-residing "Mean Girls" star is angry at her beloved momma for two reasons: 1) Because she's reportedly participating in the U.K.'s edition of "Celebrity Big Brother," which would force Lindsay to share an even smaller country with her; and 2) Because she's hawking a bunch of Lindsay's stuff through an "online flea market." 
 
 In other Lohan news, Ali is still trying to get that pop career going. 
 
 [TMZ] ||||| UPDATE: Late Wednesday evening, hours after he deleted a slew of tweets about Jay Z's Tidal, Kanye West wrote a new post on Twitter showing his support for the service. The original story is below the tweet. 
 
 The love of music is louder than words. http://t.co/dvYp0pl3An pic.twitter.com/1B4edv3jRl — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 23, 2015 
 
 Uh oh. 
 
 It seems like Kanye West is distancing himself from the Tidal music streaming service he helped launch less than a month ago. 
 
 WATCH: Jay Z Debuts New Music Streaming Service Tidal in Most Awkward Press Conference Ever 
 
 The 37-year-old rapper has changed his Twitter profile picture back to a My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy avatar from the bright blue Tidal square, and removed all mentions of the streaming service on his Twitter page. 
 
 Kanye kiiiiind of defended Tidal in his new cover story for Paper Magazine, but mostly just wrote about how it's not an Illuminati cover-up. 
 
 "I heard a comment -- a joke -- about the Tidal press conference being an Illuminati moment," said Kanye. "I'm tired of people pinpointing musicians as the Illuminati. That's ridiculous. We don't run anything; we're celebrities. We're the face of brands. We have to compromise what we say in lyrics so we don't lose money on a contract." 
 
 Either way, things are looking pretty rough for Tidal, which has fallen out of the top 700 on the iPhone apps chart, just as rival Spotify is surging, according to the Los Angeles Times. 
 
 Unlike Spotify, Tidal does not have a free alternative for its service. 
 
 WATCH: How Tidal Stacks Up Against Spotify 
 
 People on Twitter have been making fun of Kanye's apparent departure from the Tidal brand. 
 
 So Kanye deleting all his tweets about Tidal means it can die now right? — Clown Baby (@MuggleFaceMike) April 23, 2015 
 
 You could almost say it's kind of like what happened with Amy Schumer. 
 
 This is exactly how Kanye reacted when he clocked Tidal was flopping pic.twitter.com/DvWMvVuPFd — Murdock (@thecolourdeebs) April 22, 2015 
 
 NEWS: Kim Kardashian Thought Amy Schumer's Red Carpet Prank Was Really Funny 
 
 Who knows, maybe Kanye is just heeding his own advice. 
 
 I want to steer clear of “opportunities" and focus on dreams. — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 11, 2015 
 
 At least one thing's for sure.... 
 
 NEWS: Rihanna Gives U.S. History Lesson In 'American Oxygen' Video 
 
 ET has reached out to Kanye and Tidal's reps for comment. 
 
 Watch the video below for more from Kanye's Paper Magazine cover story.
– "Like Spotify, but you have to pay for it" hasn't turned out to be a great business model for Tidal, the music service Jay Z and other superstar co-owners relaunched last month. After a month, the service has already dropped out of the iPhone top 700 download chart, and the company's CEO has been replaced in what it describes as a "streamlining" move, the Guardian reports. Rivals Pandora and Spotify, meanwhile, have surged ahead and are now both in the top four of the US iPhone revenue chart, which Tero Kuittinen at BGR believes is partly because Tidal's fierce criticism of other music services raised public awareness of them. Many commentators blame the flop on the mixed message Tidal sent in having A-listers launch a music service that promised to give artists more money. Next time artists like Jay Z "pitch something for the good of starving artists," Los Angeles Times music critic Randall Roberts writes, "they probably shouldn't do it while in a mansion holding champagne flutes and toasting their gold-leafed good fortune." Tidal backer Kanye West mysteriously deleted his tweets on the service last night, reports Entertainment Tonight, but in a Paper magazine cover story, he defends it in his own way. Tidal is not an Illuminati front, he insists. "I'm tired of people pinpointing musicians as the Illuminati," he writes. "That's ridiculous. We don't run anything; we're celebrities." (This band apparently hates Tidal, and this huge star had apparently never heard of it before it launched.)