The streaming music service TIDAL, owned by Block, is changing the way it pays artists after an experimental program didn't work.
Unlike Spotify and other market leaders, who pay musicians small fractions of cents per play, TIDAL has taken a more imaginative approach to artist payments. Targeting consumers looking for a higher-quality audio experience, the platform introduced a novel Direct Artist Payments (DAP) program last year. For customers on the $19,99/month HiFi Plus tier, each subscriber's most streamed artist would receive 10% of their subscription fee.
But the plan has not worked. In April, TIDAL will end the DAP program.
"The DAP program was solely focused on the listener's #1 artist, leaving much, much less room for emerging artists to get paid," TIDAL CEO Jesse Dorogusker wrote on Twitter today. He said 70.000 artists signed up for the show, but only paid $500.000, which was "very short" of 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 10 times what it has paid artists through DAP since early 2022.
TIDAL Rising 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 pointed to a recent TIDAL initiative in Georgia, which served as a platform for four local artists, as an example of the kind of shows we can expect to see more often.
For those interested in streaming paying artists more, this news may be a bit bittersweet. But DAP may not have worked simply because TIDAL doesn't have as many subscribers compared to its competitors: last year, TIDAL had less than 2% of the global music streaming subscription market, while Spotify had 31% and Apple Music 15%. As Dorogusker pointed out, the DAP model was also a bit counter-intuitive, as payments only went to the subscriber's preferred artist. 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, Deezer hasn't been able to put it into practice because record companies have to accept the experimental system.
