Artistes across all genres can make millions and millions of money through Tidal's highest paying royalties. Photo credit: Luis Quintero
Artistes across all genres can make millions and millions of money through Tidal's highest paying royalties. Photo credit: Luis Quintero

Jay Z’s Tidal tops all digital streaming platforms for highest royalties paid to musicians

5 mins read

I today’s world, digital streaming platforms(DSPs) are the best way to go for artistes and podcasters to make their money through streaming and receiving royalties through them.

Most if not all of our artistes are already signed up for different streaming platforms but only a few of the same have signed up with Tidal which is a company owned by Jay Z.

It’s clear that Tidal holds artistes and great quality music high on their list of priorities.

After all, the company is co-owned by a large number of musicians themselves, with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Lil Wayne, Alicia Keys, Calvin Harris, T.I., Coldplay, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Jack White, Win Butler, and Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire all having a stake in the company.

Thanks to this, Tidal can offer exclusive music in its vast catalog of over 60 million songs, besides other perks like music videos, podcasts, concerts, and professionally curated playlists.

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The late L.A. rapper Nipsey Hussle expressed his preference for Tidal back in 2018 over any other services out there and provided some numbers to back it up.

ATTENTION EVERYONE:

1 Million Streams on YouTube = $690
1 Million Streams on Spotify = $4,370
1 Million Streams on Apple Music = $7,350
1 Million Streams on @Tidal = $12,500
1 Million Streams on Amazon Music = $4,020
Don’t shoot the messenger.
Jus Sign up 4 @tidal 🏁

— THA GREAT (@NipseyHussle) January 15, 2018

 

Rapper Trizz recently sparked an online debate after he also reiterated what fellow rapper, Nipsey Hussle disclosed in January 2018 subliminally telling every creative to join TIDAL because of their method of paying out royalties was somewhat different from major ones.

“For 100,000 streams Spotify pays $400…..Apple pays $600…..Tidal pays $2,800. Unfortunately, none of y’all f**k with Tidal….it’s either Spotify or Apple Music….lol the black business pays more and gets the least amount of love. Smh [Shaking my head].” Trizz tweeted yesterday which actually sparked the debate of TIdal being a better streaming platform that made the platform itself trend in tandem with the debate about the same.

Trizz also disclosed that, “Spotify CEO [Daniel Ek] basically said it’s the artist fault for not putting out enough music to make the money that we complain about not making on Spotify. Yea tell that to Jay-Z and Tidal…they pay real good.”

Tidal stated, “Tidal pays the highest ratio of royalties vs. revenues to music creators of any streaming service, and equal rates are paid to artists regardless of whether they’re signed to a major label, an indie label, or not signed to a label at all.”

Jay Z and Beyonce. Source: Getty Images/Kevin Mazur
Jay Z and Beyonce. Source: Getty Images/Kevin Mazur

Trizz who is perplexed why artistes are not on Tidal yet posed a question to his fans, asking them, “Can I ask why y’all don’t use Tidal? What’s wrong with it?”

After a fan erroneously pointed out: “The more users a streaming service has, the less they pay per 100,000 streams,” Tidal themselves got wind of the debate on Twitter and clarified, “TIDAL’s royalty rate does not depend on the number of users that use the service and we do have a strong emphasis on making sure we pay fair royalty share to the license holders.”

It’s only a matter of time before every other artistes see the bigger picture in all this and see the potential in also including their catalogs in Tidal as much as they also work with other digital streaming platforms.
It’s true, indeed music pays and it’s about time it pays majorly in Africa.