Kanye West Wants the Apple Music and Tidal Beef to End

Kanye West went on a Twitter rant, implying he could fix the Apple Music vs. Tidal beef if he could just get Tim Cook and Jay-Z on the phone.

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Kanye West took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon to let the world know that an Apple Music versus Tidal beef is "fucking up the music game, as he puts it."

West also seems to think that he could fix the situation if he could just get Apple CEO Tim Cook and Jay-Z on the phone, and said that Apple needs to stop acting like they're "Steve" (presumably a reference to the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs) and "give Jay his check."

Manager and label owner Scooter Braun, the "Scooter" West seems to have been tweeting about, is down to make it happen.

In late June, a report surfaced in the Wall Street Journal citing an unnamed source that said that Apple is considering purchasing Tidal, leading to a bit of a "sellout" backlash against owner Jay-Z. The Tidal streaming service is owned by the rapper, reportedly along with a number of smaller investors and music industry stars such as Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Calvin Harris and Chris Martin.

Months before that, Tidal started pointing out that users who subscribed to Tidal through Apple's app store were being with an extra 30 percent fee.

Jay-Z put together a huge, high-profile launch of Tidal in the spring of 2015, promising higher royalties going to musicians compared to the dominant music streaming services at the time, Spotify and Pandora. Apple jumped into the streaming music game only three months later when it launched Apple Music. 

Since then, Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal have battled it out, each offering their own exclusives on certain artists new albums, making it impossible for consumers to stream every high-profile new release as it comes out without paying for multiple subscriptions. Tidal exclusives on new releases have included Beyonce's Lemonade and West's Life of Pablo. Meanwhile Apple Music had early exclusives on Dr. Dre's Compton and Drake's Views From the 6. That model has pissed music consumers off enough to even lead to lawsuits.

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