As you many have heard, savvy music hustler Jay Z recently dropped $56 million to acquire and (re)launch Aspiro's TIDAL as a fresh HiFi streaming service that's all about musicians and their work.

Makes sense: Jay Z is one of the best in the biz for keep his ear to the ground. And artists have hardly been quiet about feeling cheated by music streaming services who've never forked over the big payouts promised when the digital music tsunami began wiping out artists' physical music sales.

Those artists need to eat, pay rent, drive cars just like everyone: why keep giving away their original work for pennies (if that)?

Yet Jay Z's high-profile promise to bring the money back to the artists has had a rocky start, despite an A-list menagerie of social-media savvy music celebrities tinkling TIDAL's praises across the World. Reviews have been stormy, as has consumer feedback.

So what's the big deal about TIDAL, once you strip it all down?

How it's different:

• Paid-only subscription tiers (no freebies).

• $20/mo. = Uncompressed HiFi sound. Great for all you audiophiles with equipment to translate the difference.

• Pretty damn solid music journalism featured in TIDAL's "playlist" blog space.

How it's not:

• Standard subscription ($10/mo.) = same sound + artist payouts as Spotify. All you have is earbuds and laptop speakers? Not going to notice a difference between the two. In fact...

• Have you seen Spotify's interface?! Practically identical (there's gotta be a lawsuit brewing).

• Ad-free with paid subscription.

A note about TIDAL's that $20/mo. tier so you can "hear the music as the artist intended". TIDAL is a music service of the artists, by the artists, for the artists and their fans; #TIDALforALL, per Jay Z and his millionaire "co-owners".

Yet how many 'normal' artists can afford to fork over $20/mo.? If the sound on the $10/mo. subscription is the same between TIDAL and Spotify, why switch?

Because you might get a personal 'Thank you!' phone call from Jay Z. Or another millionaire musician. Maybe. If you're lucky.

Tell us: have you checked out TIDAL? What's your take? Think their tide's ebbing or flooding?