When news broke out that Jay-Z would be creating a subscription streaming music service, it seemed like the perfect idea. Jay-Z is one of the most successful and well-known celebrities out today, so why wouldn’t this be another success? Well, it’s not. Jay-Z’s service, named Tidal, is supposed to help pay those struggling artists for the work they’ve created. However, what the public saw was a bunch of millionaires on stage asking for even more money.

Tidal took aim at other streaming services like Pandora and Spotify for not paying participating artists enough for their efforts. It seems, though, that Tidal has an uphill battle in front of it. According to some recent data from Apple, these attacks on the other streaming services only made the consumers more likely to turn to Spotify or Pandora. It reminded the consumers of its existence. In fact, these streaming services were completely out of the iPad Top 40 downloads list since last November, but came back in March right when Tidal made its debut. Consumers found it’s hard to sympathize with struggling artists when these artists are making tons of money. Now, Pandora and Spotify have taken the 3 and 4 spots on the U.S. iPhone’s revenue charts. They have even knocked off Candy Crush Saga in the process. Then, there is Tidal which has totally dropped out of iTunes’ Top 700 downloads list. When it first launched, it had a Top 20 performance.

There are a few reasons why Tidal is falling flat with consumers. First off, consumers just aren’t interested in paying to stream high-definition music through their cheap earbuds, especially when they can get this same music for free. Others feel, as mentioned, that these artists are being greedy here. These musicians have plenty of money as is and make their money through all kinds of means like merchandise, touring and sponsorship. Do they really need to get up and arms about how little they’re making for the music itself due to the free streaming sites?

With how strongly consumers feel against Tidal, it’s clear that this streaming service will never have the success that Jay-Z hoped to achieve. Actually, most people haven’t even heard of this movement. Due to this, Tidal will only become more and more irrelevant over time. After all, Tidal is receiving more negative PR as the days go by. There is so much backlash going on that Tidal is never being painted in a positive light in the media. What Tidal really needed was success from day one and a movement where people were recommending the service to all their friends and family. Word of mouth is key, especially when the PR is negative to begin with.

With all the negative feedback that Jay-Z was getting over his new streaming service, he had to take to Twitter to defend it. He wanted his fans and consumers alike to learn the truth about Tidal and why it is a game changer. He decided to use the hashtag #TidalFacts in his tweets. Well, like most things on Twitter, the Internet decided to poke fun at his efforts. A parody Twitter was created making fun of some other Tidal facts that were less likely to be true. These #TidalFacts became a real joke, bringing in even more backlash. In fact, Kanye West, who is a supporter of Tidal, even removed all of his tweets mentioning the service.

It’s clear that Tidal is a sinking ship. While Jay-Z may hope that Tidal will still take off and succeed, it doesn’t look like that will ever happen thanks to the way the public is perceiving it.