Jay Z has stuck up for his music streaming service Tidal in a lengthy Twitter defence.

The 99 Problems rapper launched his high-audio-quality, artist-valuing service last month, but despite briefly being in the top 20 of the iTunes App Store charts, the 20-dollars-a-month (£13) app has now dropped to number 872 in the US, according to the Daily Mirror.

Beyonce
Beyonce’s music features on the new streaming service (Chris Pizzello/Invision)

Wife Beyonce and music industry pals Rihanna, Usher, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Kanye West, Madonna and Nicki Minaj had been among those at Tidal’s launch and Jay Z tweeted that fans should not give up on it yet, saying it would pay artists more for their music than rival services.

Jay Z
Jay Z made his feelings clear about the Tidal backlash (Evan Agostini/AP)

The music star continued his defence by accusing unnamed “big companies” of spending millions on a smear campaign and said Tidal was meant to benefit artists and fans.

Jay Z
(Yui Mok/PA)

The rapper also said Tidal was a global company, and revealed that his cousin had gone to Nigeria to look for talent.