Arcade Fire’s Win Butler Talks Tidal’s "Poorly Managed Launch"

Photo by Daniel Cavazos

Arcade Fire‘s Win Butler talked to The Independent about the band’s new film The Reflektor Tapes. During the interview, he discussed their perception of Tidal—Butler and Régine Chassagne were two of the artists involved with the service’s launch. While the band don’t regret their involvement, Butler wasn’t thrilled with the impression that all-star launch gave off.

“None of the artists knew anything about the PR,” he told The Independent. “It was a poorly managed launch, but conceptually the thing that we liked about Tidal was that it’s HD streaming quality.”

Butler blamed major labels for Tidal’s struggles and specifically the price point for HD streaming.

“They dictated that Tidal has to cost $20,” he says. “The major label music industry has completely ruined every aspect of their business. At every step of the way they’ve had the tools offered to them to create an industry that works, and they’ve completely blown it. That’s why we never had any interest in signing a contract with one of these companies because they’re clearly completely clueless.”

But he said it would have been “silly” to not talk about solutions for the distribution of art “at the table with Jay Z, Kanye and Daft Punk.”

Read the full article.

Watch Butler perform at this year’s SXSW under his DJ Windows98 pseudonym:

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