Re. artist payouts, would an artist (actually, label in most cases) rather get $.012 x 100,000 streams from Tidal or $.004 x 1,000,000 streams from Spotify?
It’s way more complicated than that, but still…
Hi, reporting back from Plexville. I did post the query, but in the end it wasn’t needed. I updated the iOS native Tidal app, logged out then in again, et voila: my subscription showed as Hifi Plus. And this is via the Hifi plan purchased through Plex for the reduced price of £18.99. Hope this helps 
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The Spotify plays would represent greater plays or sales I guess. That would translate to a higher chart position.
The point was that Spotify has ~10x the number of users v. Tidal, so a moderate hit has a chance at ~10x the number of streams on Spotify v. Tidal, so even if Spotify pays less per stream the artist (or label) makes more.
That’s not really how it’s calculated. It’s way more complicated, and the “per-stream” numbers that get tossed around are averages that don’t reflect how much a specific artist/label gets paid for x number of streams.
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It is,
The new way that (coming soon, end of 2022) to divide the money is mostly designed to give even more wealth to those who already makes the most.
I do believe in the model of one play one pay model, this makes it possible for up and coming artist to actually be payed what they should.
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Nice to hear at least one voice that seems more enlightened. Many have received too much advertising fog against foresight.
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Could you elaborate… I think you are saying that Tidal’s artist payout is a marketing gimmick? Of course to some extent it is, but vis-a-vis artists are you saying its not a good thing?
Good news for you.
Plex doesn’t support family plans or has that changed?
The artists need direct contracts and payouts. The music industry and many market players think only of themselves and have sold us vinyl only to tell us that we need cassettes so that we can listen to music in the car. It has touted the CD as a better version digitally, only to tell us the CD is dead, long live the iTunes download. Everything was always offered twice, three times or even more often almost the same. Today vinyl is good again and iTunes is down with downloads. For a long time streaming was demonized, today it is our blessing. Quasi the market rescue in the Spotify cheap costume. Quite normal business economics with economies of scale would say the economists, who were long opposed by the lawyers of the music industry. Nevertheless, we can be sure that Spotify employs thousands of times more artists than all the small providers put together. However, the music industry is a very difficult negotiating partner even for the market leader.
Today, the same personnel structure not infrequently makes gagging contracts with artists, although the production costs have fallen by 90%, the distribution margins have increased significantly at the same time and for big artists the big money goes into distribution.
A Neil Young can live well on his millions, but millions of artists fall out of the distribution algorithm. That colors Tidal nicely now, but the 300 million for Jay-Z is also already spent. and the number of streams does not come out of the fold since WIMP. I don’t recognize anything more than empty words. The concert brings the income, Qobuz and Tidal are meaningless in total. Yet we are proud to entrust it to Tidal and not to the artists directly?
Of course, we sail with two or three services at the same time plus Roon in the wind and this effect is not worth up to 2 € if necessary, but certainly double or triple and the music sounds as beautiful as before. However, the number of plays will not grow significantly with us. We are the fraction of a per mille niche!
Before Primephonic, about a dozen music services were already flattened. Streaming has actually been around for 2 decades legally and fought by those who promote it in marketing today. Tidal had also positioned itself differently and is only responding to market needs, as Apple and Amazon are unnecessarily reaching into a niche they can’t really serve.
Lossless for €20 would be better for artists, but that will be discontinued soon. The demand isn’t there. MQA is already controversial here on the forum. If the last tenth of a market promille (yes larger we are not here) also still divides, first arrives at Tidal only half of the half. The free offer not yet included. It would be better, the small rest of Roon enthusiasts transfers directly and locally to its artists and does not trust that it arrives via Tidal now better and clearer. On the whole billing route, the artists are always the cheated either way. Even Tidal is now partially degenerating into an advertising pot, charging only half as much to the majority of your customer base. The pitiful remainder is plastered over with marketing.
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I did a test and played a Tidal only band/album via Roon only and the streams for that band did appear on the app overnight (seems it only updates My Activity once per day?), so it’s all good from my end.
My experieince also played a pretty obscure album last night via Tidal.amd Roon and shows up in my you played this you might like this stream this morning.
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I agree to some extent, but – who prevents anyone from BUYING a CD or hi-res download? Or going to concerts? Which would generate income for your favourite artists.
It’s all well and good reprimanding Amazon or Apple for their pricing structure, with ‘poor’ Qobuz and Tidal having to align themselves. However, with Tidal you do have the choice: pay the monthly € 20 or go for the Hifi tier at € 10 (if you think that’ll make a difference for the less known artists). On Qobuz you can buy albums.
So in the end: the ball is in YOUR court. The consumer decides how much artists get paid. And that’s you and me and all the others who stream music.
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The value of Turkish Lira has dropped further since this message. Now TRY 19.9 is USD 1.8.
No wonder Tidal packed its bags and left.
But, you can still envy me, because now Apple music costs TRY 14/mo (USD 1.3/mo.) Student pricing is TRY 7/mo (USD 0.6/mo.) 
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I can share your point of view as well, but if someone calls out free beer in the round, beer sales increase tremendously. If he calls out the keg or bottle at half price, he will lure most customers away from the more expensive offers.
Unfortunately, we all can’t drink an entire keg for free or put down many bottles at half price and then consider whether we still need the download or CD. Streaming is a sufficient substitute for the mass of potential customers.
Whether 2 customers tick differently here and truly reject free beer or beer at half price remains meaningless in the overall calculation.
A responsible music manager doesn’t ruin the high-priced niche as well.
Yes Qobuz is a role model and we can be too, but 2 CDs or downloads are also not enough for a sufficient artist income. The market has collapsed severely and is now only a small additional business.
Received email yesterday about free upgrade from my current HIFI to HIFI Plus.
HIFI - USD 3.56 or Euro 3.15 per month (formerly Tidal Normal)
HIFI Plus - USD 7.12 or Euro 6.30 per month
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@wklie Peter, thank you for your informative posts, once again!
Could you please confirm if I understand this correctly: Even in Tidal HiFi (non-Plus) tier, there’s no way to avoid MQA, as it’s the source for the lossless file? Please correct me if I’m wrong, but a lossless file resulting from an MQA file would not be identical to an “original” lossless file from the same master?
To phrase this differently, assuming the same original master for both, would the same music track in e.g. Apple Music Lossless (or any other Lossless streaming service) and Tidal HiFi (non-Plus) be identical, or not?
One way or another there is a way to support favourite Musicians and Service.
I’ll pay 2€ per month (Tidal Family plan).
Until now I have purchased 5 TB (HD & DSD formats) of music downloaded from HDtracks and HIGHRESAUDIO sites.
From Feb’2022 I’ll pay 0 € per month and after that I’ll still continue using ROON as my favourite SW Player.
Few years back I paid 2500 € for my Nucleus +.
Not exactly. My experience so far is they have non MQA encoded flac files for all titles that are above 44.1/24 and have an MQA version that renders at an ORFS above this rate such as 88.2, 96 , 176, 192 etc. ORFS is the original sample rate of the master used to make the MQA version.
Some MQA and rather a lot I might add only have an ORFS of 44.1/24. These will playback as MQA files via Roon or Tidal.or any other app that supports MQA on the Hifi tier as they are below the cap they have set. Any above that play as regular flac. Wether this regular flac has been bastardised from an MQA file or is just a regular flac source is what is unknown. I would say it’s a regular flac. There are many devices with no mqa support that have Tidal integration and they pull standard flac streams.
I imagine the 44.1/24 ORFS mqa are allowed through as there isn’t a flac equivalent for this file, where all the hires MQA ORFS have a regular flac supplied as well. I could be wrong and Tidal are downconverting mqa to 44.1/16 but I am sure that’s not happening and is conspiracy nonsense and users get a regular flac stream. Not sure legally they would be allowed to transcode MQA files.
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I don’t know about the non-Plus account, but MQA is clearly marked for me. You just need to find the non MQA version if that’s your intention. For some particular albums they are always MQA even from Qobuz, Apple Music or Spotify HiFi.
See above, mqa is present for certain titles only one witj ORFS of 44.1/24.