BUSINESS

Jay Z's Superstar Tidal Backers Have How Many Twitter Followers?

3/30/2015 by Marc Schneider

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Roc Nation
Usher, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, Deadmau5, Kanye West, Jay Z and J. Cole onstage at the Tidal launch event #TIDALforALL at Skylight at Moynihan Station on March 30, 2015 in New York City.  

Jay Z brought along some (very) famous and influential friends for this week's re-launch of Tidal, his high-fidelity music streaming service. The rapper's strategy to reach the most prospective subscribers began with a mysterious viral campaign, which saw artists with a combined 156 Twitter million followers change their avatars blue and declare #TIDALforALL in similar tweets.

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Several big social gets for Jay Z in his rollout campaign include Alicia Keys (21.46 million Twitter followers), Coldplay (14.4 million), Nicki Minaj (19.1 million) and Rihanna (43 million), respectively. Jay's wife Beyonce, who has 14 million followers but has not tweeted since August 2013, also blued-out her avatar, as did Kanye West (11.8 million) and Usher (10.2 million). Most included the message "History will be made in 5 hours" and a 30-second promo for a live stream event.

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Like clockwork, each artist also let their followers know when the event went live.

And it worked:

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Twitter Followers:

Alicia Keys – 21.46M
Arcade Fire – 771.7K
Beyonce – 13.9M
Calvin Harris – 5.7M
Coldplay – 14.4M
Deadmau5 – 3.1M
Jack White / Third Man Records: 121K
Jason Aldean – 2.71M
Kanye West – 11.8M
Madonna – 684K
Nicki Minaj – 19.1M
Jay Z – 3.12M
Rihanna - 43M
Usher – 10.2M
J Cole – 6.45M

TOTAL: 156 million followers

This group of Tidal backers is even more impressive when you begin adding up their sales figures, which amounts to roughly 642 million combined U.S. album and digital songs, according to Nielsen Music. In terms of album sales, Madonna leads the pack (53.2 million*) followed by Jay Z (35.6 million), Usher (23.8 million) and Alicia Keys (18.4 million). As for digital songs, Rihanna leads the way (75.9 million), followed by Jay Z (49.2 million), Beyonce (46.2 million) and Kanye West (45 million).

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U.S. Album Sales

Alicia Keys – 18.4M
Arcade Fire – 2.6M
Beyonce – 15.8M
Calvin Harris – 0.3M
Coldplay – 18.3M
Daft Punk – 3.3M
Deadmau5 – 1.1M
Jack White – 0.9M
Jason Aldean – 10.1M
Kanye West – 14.6M
Madonna – 53.2M* (SoundScan era = 28.2M // RIAA certs through May 1991 = 25M)
Nicki Minaj – 3.4M
Jay Z –35.6M
Rihanna – 10.3M
Usher – 23.8M
J Cole – 1.6M

TOTAL: 213.3M

U.S. Digital Song Sales

Alicia Keys – 21.9M
Arcade Fire – 3M
Beyonce – 46.2M
Calvin Harris – 11.4M
Coldplay – 33.8M
Daft Punk – 9.9M
Deadmau5 – 5M
Jack White – 1.3M
Jason Aldean – 32.3M
Kanye West – 45M
Madonna – 18.5M
Nicki Minaj – 29.8M
Jay Z – 49.2M
Rihanna – 75.9M
Usher – 38.2M
J Cole – 7.3M

TOTAL: 428.7M