TIDAL unveils new membership options, artist-friendly features
TIDAL has unveiled some big changes to the way their streaming service works, including expanding their membership options to three different levels: TIDAL Free, TIDAL HiFi, and TIDAL HiFi Plus.
“With access to the same catalog of over 80 million songs, each membership has its own set of perks to empower your music experience.”
- TIDAL Free — their first-ever free option — gets you the “entire music catalog and playlists, with limited interruptions.”
- TIDAL HiFi features an upgrade to lossless sound quality, offline listening with unlimited skips, a new activity feed, and more.
- TIDAL HiFi Plus includes access to Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) audio, immersive audio, and other innovative listening experiences, and will be better for artists
About the new artist-friendly features, TIDAL explains:
Did you know that today artists are paid from a massive royalty “pool”, based on the aggregate listening patterns across all subscribers for the month? That means if someone else streams more than you do, they influence who gets your royalty shares. We think it’s time to relook at how these are calculated so artists can finally earn what they deserve.
Starting in January 2022, we will include a fan-centered royalties approach to paying artists within our HiFi Plus tier. This fairer take on royalty payments ensures that your monthly subscription goes directly to your own favorite artists as opposed to the industry accepted method of allocating it to the most popular artists.
All of your streaming activity will be visible in your My Activity feed so you can see exactly how your streams add up month-to-month. We think transparency is key to creating a more fair and equitable industry for artists and fans. And, this is just the first step when it comes to your streaming data.
The fan-centered royalties begin in 2022, and starting now are direct-to-artist payments, where a percentage of HiFi Plus subscribers’ membership fees go directly to their most streamed artist. This direct-to-artist payment is in addition to artists’ streaming royalties.
For more information, and to sign up, head to TIDAL.
This post is sponsored by TIDAL. Any opinions and ideas expressed are strictly our own.
