Alicia Keys: Tidal is groundbreaking

Alicia Keys declares the course of music history has been changed with the launch of streaming service Tidal.

Alicia was joined by a whole host of A-list names for the unveiling of the artist-owned music service in New York, including Madonna, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj.

Jay Z and wife Beyoncé Knowles were also in attendance, with Jay being the first to invest in Aspiro, the Norwegian company that created Tidal.

"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," Alicia told the audience. "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."

Alicia was the only artist to address the crowd, though she was joined on stage by her fellow singers.

Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, Daft Punk, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J. Cole, Deadmau5, Rihanna and Usher were also there, while British stars Calvin Harris and Chris Martin appeared digitally.

"Today is the day. This is the beginning of a whole new era," Alicia outlined.

Jay recently spoke to Billboard magazine about how important he thinks Tidal is going to be.

With stars like Taylor Swift taking all of her music off of rival streaming site Spotify, Jay thinks there's no better time for artists to get involved with a new music platform.

"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 explained.

"[Each of the founding owners has an equal stake in its equity],that's the utopia. Everyone is sharing in it; everyone is some kind of owner in it in some kind of way."