Tidal (service)


Tidal is a Norwegian-American music streaming service, launched in 2014 by Aspiro and now majority-owned by Block, Inc. Tidal is available in 61 countries and licenses 100 million tracks and 650,000 music videos.
Tidal has distribution agreements with major and independent record labels. Tidal claimed in 2015 to pay the highest percentage of royalties to music artists and songwriters within the music streaming market. However, later informal studies showed that some other streaming services pay a higher percentage than Tidal.
In March 2015, Aspiro was acquired by Project Panther Bidco Ltd., which relaunched the service with a mass-marketing campaign, promoting it as the first artist-owned streaming service. In January 2017, Sprint Corporation bought 33% of Tidal for a reported $200 million. In March 2021, Block, then known as Square, agreed to pay $297 million for majority ownership of Tidal. In June, 2022, through the disclosure of the annual stockholder meeting 2022, Block reported that the stake acquired in the Tidal music service was 86.8%.
While some observers praised the high-fidelity audio quality and higher subscription fees that would result in higher royalties to the artists and songwriters, others felt the high subscription fees and exclusive Tidal content from the artists involved could lead to more music piracy. Tidal claimed to have over 3 million subscribers in 2016, although the veracity of those claims and the company's reported streaming numbers have been questioned.

History

Branching off from WiMP, which was launched in Norway in 2010 and later available in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Poland, Aspiro launched the Tidal brand in the UK, the US, and Canada on October 28, 2014. The launch was supported by Sonos and 15 other home audio manufacturers as integration partners. In January 2015, Tidal launched in five more European countries: Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Aspiro was purchased by Project Panther Bidco Ltd. for SEK 466 million in January 2015. Before the acquisition of Aspiro, Jay-Z stated in an interview with Billboard that he was willing to partner with other streaming services to carry out his vision. "We talked to every single service and we explored all the options," he said, "But at the end of the day, we figured if we're going to shape this thing the way we see it, then we need to have independence. And that became a better proposition for us, not an easier one, mind you," he concluded.
On April 16, 2015, it came to public attention that Tidal was closing its original Aspiro offices in Stockholm, terminating the employment for all Swedish employees and the CEO, Andy Chen. The company refused to comment on closing the offices but confirmed that Andy Chen had been replaced as CEO by Peter Tonstad. In September 2015, Tidal began selling digital downloads and CDs. In December 2015, Tidal appointed Jeff Toig as CEO of the company. Toig left the company in March 2017. Richard Sanders was announced as CEO in August 2017.
In early January 2017, Tidal partnered with Mercedes-Benz's web portal app. American rapper Nicki Minaj starred in a commercial promoting the Mercedes partnership. Tidal also announced a partnership with British company Master Quality Authenticated which they claimed delivered master-quality recordings at typically 96 kHz / 24-bit with the highest possible resolution to its HiFi subscribers. Tidal was then the only streaming company to offer MQA. The catalog available in MQA on Tidal comprised certain albums and singles from Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, its affiliates and certain independent distributors, including AvidPlay service provided by Avid Technology. After November 2020, the largest part of the MQA catalog available on Tidal was that of Warner Music Group and its affiliates, which was made available as part of a new deal with MQA and Warner Music Group itself. In the past, Sony Music also offered certain albums and singles from their catalog in MQA on Tidal, but their quantity later declined; exceptions include Beyoncé's albums Lemonade and Homecoming: The Live Album, both released by Parkwood Entertainment and distributed by Columbia Records.
In late January 2017, US mobile carrier Sprint announced that they were buying a 33 percent stake in Tidal, and it was reported that Sprint would offer exclusive content to Sprint customers.
In June 2017, Tidal announced a series of podcasts to launch in the same year. American rappers Fat Joe and Joey Badass hosted Coca Vision and 47 Minutes respectively.
In July 2019, Tidal expanded their credits feature and launched interactive official music credits on the platform, allowing user to click on musicians and other contributors. These credits are supplied by the labels and artists direct to Tidal.
In 2020, Tidal launched its "My Rewind" feature, which is available on the 1st of December every year alongside a curated "Best of" series, which allows users to view a compilation of data about their activity on the platform over the preceding year and allows them to share this on social media in a similar vein to Spotify Wrapped.
In March 2021, it was announced that financial technology company Square, Inc. had reached an agreement to acquire majority ownership of Tidal. Square would pay $297 million in cash and stock for Tidal, and Jay-Z would have a board position. Jay-Z and other artists who owned stock in Tidal would remain stakeholders.
In November 2021, Tidal introduced a free tier for the first time, though exclusively for the United States. CD-quality HiFi audio was also introduced to all paid plans, while MQA-quality audio was kept exclusive for the new HiFi Plus plan.
Tidal's download store closed in October 2022.
Tidal laid off more than 10% of its staff in December 2023.
In April 2024, Tidal merged its two subscription plans to become one, simply named Tidal, which offered the same quality as the former HiFi Plus plan. However, a month later, Tidal removed the feature to listen in MQA.
In March 2025, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Block, Tidal's parent company, announced plans to lay off 930 Block employees. He stated that the reorganization was a step towards increasing the company's stock value.

Platform exclusivity

A selling point for Tidal as compared with other streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora Radio is the exclusive content available from the artists who co-own the company, as well as others. Exclusive content available on the relaunch of Tidal included Rihanna's single "Bitch Better Have My Money", The White Stripes debut television appearance, Daft Punk's Electroma, and playlists personally curated by Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Arcade Fire, and Coldplay. In 2015, Tidal stated on its Twitter feed that "lots of exclusive content on the way".
Jay-Z's catalogue was not available on Spotify but was almost entirely exclusive on Tidal until 2019, his 50th birthday.

Artist ownership

On March 30, 2015, a press conference was held at Skylight at Moynihan Station in New York City, to relaunch Tidal. The conference started with a brief introduction and explanation of Tidal. After introducing the sixteen artist co-owners of Tidal onstage, recording artist Alicia Keys spoke on behalf of the artists and for Tidal. She stated, "So we come together before you on this day, March 30th, 2015, with one voice in unity in the hopes that today will be another one of those moments in time, a moment that will forever change the course of music history." Keys also described the event as like a "graduation". At the end of the press conference, all artists onstage signed a declaration, which stated Tidal's mission. Tidal claimed to have gained 100,000 new subscribers following the press conference revealing the artists involved in the service.
During the press conference, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Daft Punk, Jack White, Madonna, Arcade Fire, Alicia Keys, Usher, Chris Martin, Calvin Harris, deadmau5, Jason Aldean and J. Cole were introduced to the stage as "the owners of TIDAL". Eric Harvey of Pitchfork stated of the artists who co-own the service, "These are the 1 percent of pop music in the world right now, these are artists who do not answer to record labels, do not answer to corporations."
In June 2015, Lil Wayne joined the service's roster as an artist co-owner, starting the partnership by exclusively releasing a track on the service called "Glory". On February 23, 2016, T.I. joined the service's roster as the latest co-owner, beginning the partnership by releasing "Money Talk", a single from his tenth album, Dime Trap, exclusively on the service; his album was also streamed live on Tidal from Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta.
On July 1, 2017, it was reported Kanye West had left Tidal as co-owner and shareholder, after a financial argument with its board of directors regarding compensation for his contributions to the company. West later demanded payment from Tidal of $3 million for his inclusion on marketing efforts, video production, and claiming the release of his 2016 album The Life of Pablo was the reason for Tidal's 1.5 million subscriber increase soon after the release. In response, Tidal stated West failed to deliver the videos he promised on his contract.

Releases

In April 2015, Tidal exclusives included Beyoncé releasing a video of her performing "Die With You", a never-before-heard original song, dedicated to her and Jay-Z's wedding anniversary, Madonna releasing a teaser of her upcoming music video for "Ghosttown", and Rihanna debuting her new song and music video "American Oxygen".
In May 2015, Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé released the official "Feeling Myself" music video exclusively on Tidal.
In January 2016, Tidal released Rihanna's Anti as a one-week exclusive stream. In February 2016, Tidal secured an exclusive initial release with Kanye West's The Life of Pablo. West went on to vow that the album would "never appear on any other services ", nor would it ever be for sale. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her second visual album, Lemonade, for streaming exclusively on Tidal. On April 25, it was made available for purchase by track or album on Amazon Music and the iTunes store and on May 6, it arrived at physical retailers.
Jay-Z's 2017 album 4:44 debuted on Tidal. The next year, Jay-Z released a collaborative album with Beyoncé, Everything Is Love, via Tidal.