If you buy physical, royalties start around 10% for new bands. A $15 CD will give a $1.50 royalty (keeping it simple and in dollars due to above rates).
For an average 12 track album, Tidal will pay $0.156.
If you listen to an album 10 times, by my maths this would mean $1.56, which is more than some artists will get from a physical CD (they get more from vinyl). I am happy to be corrected.
I have many albums that I have listened to more than 10 times, which means the artist gets more money from streaming the a physical CD.
I know bandcamp pays a higher rate.
Tidal used to give your most played artist an extra $2 per month, which they have stopped. I am not sure how their new pledge to help new artists work.
Sadly many users subscribe to Spotify and that math doesnât hold true for them.
With the rates Tidal are paying they cannot afford to pay the artists the $2 a month, though I was happy when they did that as I pushed my listening higher for my selected artist each month.
Have Tidal released their updated artist renumeration policy that they were talking about last year, I can see that they might do it differently with each tier with the extra money available. It will interesting to see where it goes and maybe I will resubscribe to the top tier again if I like what I see.
(I will add that I mostly stream to decide if I will buy, with most of my purchases then happening on Bandcamp if available or Qobuz if not available on Bandcamp)
I wonât pay it. Too much. Satisfied with my 5 Tb of Hi Res music.
Which are, what, 5000 or 10000 albums, depending on resolution? If we take 7500 and you paid a lowly 10 euros per album, thatâs an equivalent of about 300 years of Tidal subscription.
I was comparing and based on what I listen to, Qobuz has more hires versions of albums that Iâm interested in. Many times Qobuz had some flavor of 24 bit and Tidal just had 16/44.1.
Yea, so you see I donât need Tidal.
Well ⌠not all is added yet⌠only 40% ⌠I fix metadata and artwork, anal here. Lotta work.
Not that high a track list as you suggest, I dumped all mp3 and most of my AAC and have mostly DSD64 and FLAC at 24-96 or better now ⌠so that takes alot more disc space than normal folk collecting mp3 and AAC.
Sure, thatâs fine, but you paid several times what others will pay for Tidal in a lifetime, so the argument that Tidal costs too much is on a bit shaky feet
My math was off 
but at 24-192 itâs still several thousand albums, and 10 euro per album was low
If itâs so expensive you canât afford it, pay for a cheaper option. If you can afford Tidal, then choosing to pay artists more is a reasonable thing to do. The debate about quality and MQA is separate and probably even Tidal donât know how that is going to develop.
QOBUZ does not have its own âconnectâ protocol, but uses Chromecast Audio up to 96Khz@24bit.
Just a few posts up, AFAIK this is accurate:
About 10% for new bands was what I read many times over many years.
This seminal article by Steve Albini, The Problem With Music, is now outdated but also is a good read and gives an important account of the situation in the 90ies during the âalternativeâ sellout:
Though in the context of this thread it is worth noting that, at least in 2014, Albini said âŚ
Full speech in Albiniâs own words:
Some people just whant somthing for nothing
Money for nothing and your chicks for free!
You should renew! I lost out⌠I also had an annual Best Buy Tidal Hi Fi Plus membership but let it lapse a few months ago because they were offering a 3 month promotion for like $3, so I got that instead. Now that that is expiring soon, I was going to purchase again the annual subscription for $120 but it isnât offered anymore. The only thing of Tidal they now list online is a $60 gift card. No subscriptions.
Iâm not sure how you can justify asking that question quite honestly.
Use another streaming service if you donât like it.
Itâs worth pausing to understand what streaming is.
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far far away a musician could literally live the rest of their life off the royalties from one hit song. The widow of the My Sharona guy lives here on Maui. Iâve been to a few parties at her house. She literally lives a financially carefree life based up that one stinkinâ song! All the pot she can smoke!
The digital music industry was nearly sent to the poor house by torrent websites. The primary music buying demographic (youths) could download anything for free. And they did.
When suing teenagers failed to stem the tide, the music industry eventually became a torrent website. Canât beat âem, join them. And for a nominal monthly fee, we have access to a nicely organized music torrent website with all the music ever made. The nuevo torrent services (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tidal, etc) make big money themselves, and keep the record label suits in nice cars.
It takes approximately 420,000 streams on Spotify for an artist to make $1000.
At $8 profit per CD, they only haves to sell 125 CDs to make $1000.
And ultimately it is we the, music consuming public, that has decimated the financial structure for most musical artists. With streaming, we are literally stealing in every meaningful sense. Legalized stealing.
For reasons having little to do with being fair to artists, I prefer physical media. Vinyl, CDs and SACDs constitute 90% of my listening. I enjoy it more. Even though I have a lifetime Roon license with Tidal, I prefer not having a computer, tablet or phone infiltrate the sanctity of music listening. By coincidence, it happens to better for the artists. Much better.
Music streaming is really no different than those scenes in the news of flash mobs robbing department stores. Torrent websites were awful for musicians back in the day, and our current era streaming sites are just that, torrent websites aka flash mobs.
Our My Sharona Heiress, if in todayâs market, would be working at Dennyâs 40 years after their song instead of in an oceanfront house on Maui.
Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places if we look at it right.
On the other hand, if the plumber was payed royalties everytime i had use for the crapper, wouldnât that feel a little strange? 
He could buy the property next to the My Sharona heiress!
This is why for the artists I really care about, when I can I try to see them live when they are in my area and maybe buy a piece of tour merch as well. Touring is the only way these guys can make a living now.
This is certainly the seeds for your Plumberâs Union presidency acceptance speech 