Musikdienst Tidal wants to reward artists more fairly – but the revenue model is opaque
Subscribers to the music streaming service Tidal will soon have one more criteria when it comes to what they want to hear next. Because the music service has announced that it intends to introduce payments directly to the artists and fan-oriented royalties in the future. Above all, the aim is to satisfy artists who in the past were often dissatisfied with the income generated by the music services.
Tidal has always been one of the most artist-friendly platforms for music (Jay-Z is one of the founders), so the approach to specifically involve artists is no coincidence. Tidal was also one of the services at an early age who worked with higher quality and their own digitally-oriented mastering instead of simply offering the tracks in compressed form. In addition to the hi-fi option, there is now also hi-fi plus. All variants have access to the same catalog of over 80 million songs, videos and expert playlists, with each version having its own advantages.
Tidal Hifi costs 9.99 euros a month and offers music at up to 1,411 kilobits per second, whereby you can also reduce the quality on the go to save data. You can use it to listen offline and access functions such as Tidal Connect and My Activity, which offer individual insights into daily listening behavior. Tidal Hifi Plus, on the other hand, costs 19.99 euros a month and, in addition to the features of the Hifi version, offers fan-centered royalties and direct payments to artists. Hifi Plus continues to offer access to the best immersive sound formats (Dolby Atmos Music and Sony 360 Audio Recordings) and Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), as well as early access to exclusive offers and future features.
The most performed artists also receive the most royalties. The additional source of revenue, however, only speaks of “a certain percentage of the membership fees”, which is in addition to the usual royalties. How much that is remains unclear. Starting in 2022, Tidal will take a different approach to royalties. In this new model, the royalties for Hifi-Plus subscribers are no longer aggregated. Rather, the royalties are paid based on the actual streaming activities of the individual Hifi-Plus subscribers, as opposed to the industry-standard method of aggregating streams, which allows fans to play a greater role in the success of their favorite artists.
To this end, Tidal has teamed up with Square, Cash App and PayPal. How much remains for each artist and whether the mandatory internal platform registration is worthwhile remains to be seen. In addition to direct registration, which is currently only possible by invitation, this should be possible through Tidal sales partners.
In addition, the streaming service, which has always been considered to be particularly artist-friendly, has made another announcement that should especially please those who do not want to be tied to a certain provider for the time being: The new free service offers access to all artists and Songs within the catalog and should work ad-supported – similar to what Spotify has been offering for years. So far, however, the free service has only been activated for the US market – it is not yet known when Germany and the other European markets will follow. Overall, you can tell here that Tidal is causing problems for the competition. In addition to Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon are also important competitors. Positioning yourself on this artist-friendly solution (however fair and comprehensive it is) is not a mistake.
