TIDAL – A Free Tier Plus Artist Direct Payments

TIDAL has made several significant changes and updates to its services, and to supporting the music artists. They have recently announced that:

1. There will be  a new free tier.
2. Lossless 16-bit 44.1kHz audio streams in its standard plan: TIDAL HiFi, which is priced at $9.99/month.
3. 10% of your Hi-Fi Plus subscription will go directly to the artists.

TIDAL Free. This new tier has launched here in the USA offering no cost streaming with access to a library of 80 million tracks at 160kbps with “limited interruptions”. TIDAL has indicated that these interruptions will not be adverts, but will be aimed at educating consumers on the music industry. This free tier is said to extend to other countries in the coming months.

TIDAL HiFi includes interruption-free access to audio at up to 1411 kbps (previously 320kbps) as well as offline storage and access to features such as Tidal Connect. TIDAL’s Family Tier will also benefit from this update.

TIDAL HiFi Plus at $19.99 a month, gives you everything from TIDAL HiFi adding immersive sound formats (Dolby Atmos Music and Sony 360 Audio recordings) and Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) tracks (at up to 9216 kbps).

Image Credit: TIDAL

Click here for more information on all subscription tiers.

However, the big news is that, as promised, Square’s Jack Dorsey has started ‘direct-to-artist’ payments for the creators of the music being hosted by TIDAL. In addition to the  standard royalties, TIDAL will distribute up to 10% of your HiFi Plus subscription directly to the artists you listen to the most each month. Also starting next year ‘fan-centric royalties’ will be paid based on the actual streaming activity of individual HiFi Plus subscribers and not just the industry-accepted method of aggregating streams. This will give music fans the opportunity to play a larger “role” in the success of their favorite artists.

For artists to take part in these new direct payouts they must choose to opt-in to the program either through TIDAL’s invite-only direct registration option or through distribution partners. Access to these programs will open shortly. Further information may be found at tidal.com/ForArtists.

Its good to see some solid effort to help support these music artists for all their time, hard work and creativity, but in the end will streaming hurt these artists if the sales of physical media dwindle to nothing and they loose control of their material?