We haven’t heard much from Tidal recently, and it was notable that in parent company Block’s latest quarterly shareholder letter, its music-streaming subsidiary wasn’t mentioned at all.
However, it turns out that Tidal has been quietly working on a significant shift for its service: the addition of a ‘Tidal Upload‘ feature that enables artists to upload tracks directly to its platform, where they can then be streamed – including by listeners who don’t have a Tidal subscription.
(The link above may only work in the US. When accessed from the UK it currently diverts to the main Tidal homepage.)
In other words, Tidal is becoming SoundCloud, complete with the ability for artists to keep their uploaded tracks ‘unpublished’ – so they can be shared with collaborators and partners, but not the wider world.
For now, Tidal Upload is free for US artists, who can upload up to 200 tracks – although the company’s support FAQ on the new feature notes that this limit may change in the future
The obvious question: do these artist-uploaded tracks generate royalties? The answer to that is in the FAQ too. “No, your uploaded files do not earn royalties.”
However, Tidal has launched a “weekly spotlight program” where its editors will be choosing Upload tracks to feature on the service’s playlists and home page.
The artists chosen will be “eligible to receive $100 in their Cash App [another Block subsidiary] account for each day they are featured,” explained Tidal. It has also launched an ‘Upload Headliners‘ contest that will reward 10 winners with $100k each from a prize fund.
Competition for SoundCloud in the direct-uploads space is a good thing, but it will bring some challenges for Tidal. Not least screening out copyrighted music uploaded without the permission of its creators or rightsholders.
The FAQ page makes it clear that Tidal will be using detection technology to flag these cases, warning that “covers of works by other artists” as well as remixes of and samples from copyrighted tracks may be flagged. It is also using a DMCA takedowns system for rightsholders to flag cases.
There is also the challenge of AI slop. Deezer said this week that 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are uploaded to its platform every day – and that’s via distributors.
Removing those middlemen could see Tidal facing as big (or even bigger) a flood of GenAI tracks. It may be comfortable with that, of course, but if not, there will be some policy decisions to make.
But the final question about Tidal’s strategic shift concerns its parent company. Last November, Block announced that it was “scaling back our investment” in the music service.
However, taking on a resurgent SoundCloud isn’t something that’s best attempted on a shoestring budget. Perhaps Upload – Cash App tie-in included – reflects renewed support from Block.
