Some of music’s biggest names have turned out to launch new music streaming service Tidal.

In a who’s who of chart toppers, megastars including Jay Z, Beyonce, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Alicia Keys, Rihanna and Usher showed their support for the artist-owned, high-definition service.

They were joined by Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, Daft Punk, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J Cole and Deadmau5,

They took to the stage at the loading dock of New York City’s biggest post office and were joined by Calvin Harris and Chris Martin, who appeared via video link.

Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys spoke at the launch (Andy Kropa/Invision)

As a rival to streaming services like Spotify and Deezer, Tidal offers a huge back catalogue of songs and video at a monthly fee for either standard sound quality or top-shelf audio.

According to Billboard, Alicia Keys addressed the crowd from the music line-up, saying: “We come together before you on this day… with one voice in unity in the hopes that today will be a moment that will forever change the course of music history.

“Our goal is simple: We want to create a better service and a better experience for both fans and artists, and that is our promise to the world.”

After explaining that Tidal was a way of preserving the music industry and its value, she called on the other artists who are all co-owners of the site after investing in it to sign a “declaration”, promising, “this is the beginning of a whole new era”.

Nicki Minaj Instagrammed a snap of herself, Alicia and Beyonce from the event.

Swedish technology company Aspiro, which owned Tidal, was bought out by Jay Z last year for more than 50 million US dollars (£33.8 million). The new service’s strategy will include encouraging artists to lobby their record labels to let them “window” new releases for a minimum of a week, making them exclusive to Tidal for that time.

The rapper told Billboard recently: “We saw the movement and how everything was going and figured that this could possibly be the last music format that we see in this lifetime.

“We didn’t like the direction music was going and thought maybe we could get in and strike an honest blow and if the very least we did was make people wake up and try to improve the free-versus-paid system, and promote fair trade, then it would be a win for us anyway.”

Jay Z
Jay Z was an early Tidal investor (Yui Mok/PA)

Explaining that all founding owners in Tidal had an equal stake in its equity, he said: “That’s the utopia. Everyone is sharing in it; everyone is some kind of owner in it in some kind of way.

“Will artists make more money? Even if it means less profit for our bottom line, absolutely. That’s easy for us. We can do that. Less profit for our bottom line, more money for the artist; fantastic.”