Kanye pleads for Tidal survival, big response

Kanye West sent out this tweet yesterday:

Please for all music lovers. Please subscribe to tidal!!! I decided not to sell my album for another week. Please subscribe to tidal.

Kanye is part owner of Tidal and plans to stream his latest album exclusively on Tidal, at least for the first week, in order to drive up subscriptions.

The strategy appears to have worked, at least in terms of getting people to download the Tidal app:

Man thank you so so so much everyone for signing up to Tidal. Tidal is now the number one app in the world!!!

Indeed, the Tidal app quickly became the number one free download in the iOS App Store. The obvious question is, will these free app downloads translate into paid subscriptions? And if this strategy succeeds, will other high-demand artists continue the strategy of using demand for their music to steer fans to boutique music services?

As of this post, Tidal continues to sit atop the free app download chart.