Tidal Interim CEO Leaves After 3 Months on the Job

Music streaming’s come a long way, baby. It’s supplanted downloads as the primary form of distribution for the industry and like the introduction of Napster and file sharing in the late ’90s, the incumbent players are still trying to figure out what it means to them.

Apple, the king of music downloads, is trying to pivot to streaming with Apple Music. The current darling, Spotify, is having its own problems with doubts as to the viability of steaming music as a revenue stream. Finally, there’s Tidal — the streaming service owned by billionaire music talent.

Apple has money behind it. Spotify has a first-mover advantage. Tidal? No one’s really sure. If anything, it’s been the butt of jokes.

This won’t help: Peter Tonstad, the interim CEO of Tidal, left the company. Tonstad, who was based out of Oslo, Norway, was on the job for about three months.

Whoever Tidal’s next CEO is — which may be drawn from the company’s roster of A-list musician/celebrity owners as a bit of stunt casting — they’ll have a big hurdle to overcome.

Its subscription base weighs in at at about 770,000 users. That’s much smaller than Spotify’s membership and despite its star power, it does not have the same marketing sway as Apple.

Via The Wall Street Journal. Screenshot from Tidal.com.