TIDAL Launches Free Membership Tier, New Artist Revenue Methods

TIDAL has officially unveiled a free membership tier along with new revenue methods for its artists.

The Square-owned streaming service announced that US subscribers can access their entire music catalog with over 80 million songs, videos and curated playlists with limited interruptions via TIDAL Free. Meanwhile, subscribers in TIDAL’s 61 international markets can use TIDAL HiFi, an interruption-free tier with HiFi sound quality, offline capabilities and features like TIDAL Connect and My Activity, at $9.99 USD a month and TIDAL HiFi Plus, which includes everything TIDAL HiFI offers in addition to fan-centered royalties and direct-to-artist payments, Dolby Atmos Music and Sony 360 Audio Recordings, Master Quality Authenticated and early access to exclusive features.

Meanwhile, artists who stream their music on TIDAL will experience its newest transparency and revenue features — direct-to-artist payments and fan-centered royalties. The direct-to-artist payments promises to “give artists access to an additional payment stream” directly from their biggest fans on TIDAL, along with a percentage of HiFi Plus subscribers’ membership fees, while the fan-centered royalties, which takes effect in 2022, “will be paid based on the actual streaming activity of individual HiFi Plus subscribers as opposed to the industry accepted method of aggregating streams, empowering fans to play a larger role in the success of their favorite artists.”

Elsewhere in music, a $750 million USD lawsuit has been filed against Travis Scott, Drake, Live Nation and Apple Music over the Astroworld tragedy.