Block-owned music streaming service TIDAL is changing the way it pays artists after an experimental program failed to produce results.
Unlike Spotify and other market leaders, who pay musicians small fractions (…of fractions) of cents per play, TIDAL has taken a more imaginative approach to artist payouts. The platform, which targets consumers looking for a higher-quality audio experience, introduced a groundbreaking Direct Artist Payments (DAP) program last year. For customers on the $19.99/mo HiFi Plus tier, each individual subscriber’s most streamed artist would earn 10% of their subscription fee.
Turns out that plan didn’t work. In April, TIDAL will end the DAP program.
“The DAP program focused only on a listener’s #1 artist, which left much, much less room for emerging artists to get paid,” TIDAL CEO Jesse Dorogusker wrote in a post. Twitter thread today. He said 70,000 artists signed up for the show, but they only paid $500,000, which was “well below” TIDAL’s goal.
Instead of DAP, TIDAL is pouring more money into its TIDAL Rising program, which promotes up-and-coming musicians. Dorogusker said that TIDAL will invest at least $5 million in this program, more than ten times what it has paid out to artists through DAP since early 2022.
Rising TIDE supports select emerging artists by making documentaries and other promotional materials to help accelerate their careers; alumni of the show include Alessia Cara, Chloe x Halle, and 21 Savage. Dorogusker referenced a recent TIDAL initiative on Georgiawhich put four local artists on the platform, as an example of the types of shows we can expect to see more of.
For those interested in more artist-friendly streaming payments, this news may seem a bit bittersweet. But it’s possible that DAP didn’t work simply because TIDAL doesn’t have as many subscribers, compared to the competition: Last year, TIDAL had less than 2% of the global music streaming subscription market, while Spotify had 31% and Apple Music. had 15%. As Dorogusker pointed out, the DAP model was also a bit counterintuitive, with payments only going to the best artist from a subscriber. Deezer, a French music streaming platform, has proposed switching to a user-centric payment system, which divides a user’s subscription fee proportionally among all the artists they listen to. However, the transmitter has not been able to implement this, as the tags must accept the experimental system.
