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Find the most in-depth info on the TIDAL music streaming platform.
Despite TIDAL’s secretive behavior, we managed to dig up some interesting stats about the company.
Such as:
- How many people visit TIDAL monthly
- In what country is TIDAL the most popular
- How much does TIDAL pay per stream
What is TIDAL?
TIDAL is an artist-owned music streaming platform centered around artists. It helps emerging musicians to grow by offering better pay. Let’s see how big it is.
Contents:
How many users does TIDAL have?
TIDAL Revenue Statistics
Learn about Tidal revenue from previous years and estimated revenue for the future.
- TIDAL’s estimated revenue is between $100 to $200 million per year.
TIDAL doesn’t want to disclose actual numbers (Similarweb).
- TIDAL earned $166.9 million in revenue in 2019.
That’s 13% more compared to the year before.
- $165.82 million came from paying subscriptions.
- The other $1 million represents sponsorship money.
Still, that’s only $20 million more than $147.6 million in 2018 (Digital Music News).
- TIDAL operated at a $55.3 million loss in 2019.
In 2018, the loss was slightly lower at $36.7 million (Digital Music News).
- TIDAL has generated $2 million in revenue in Poland from 2015 to January 2022. (Statista)
The highest monthly revenue peak was reached in August 2021, when TIDAL earned over $55.000 (Statista 2).
- Sprint bought 33% of TIDAL for $200 million in January 2017.
The deal was mostly in favor of TIDAL since it brought them new subscribers (at the time, TIDAL became available to 45 million Sprint users).
The streaming platform also agreed to host exclusive music releases (Forbes).
- In March 2021, the majority of TIDAL ownership was sold to Square for $297 million dollars.
Square’s main mission is to use TIDAL to popularize blockchain purchases on music streaming platforms. They’re also interested in offering NFTs (non-fungible tokens) like autographs and memorabilia to fans (Reuters).
How do you check your listening statistics using TIDAL’s History Mixes?
- Simply go into your TIDAL app.
- Click on the “History” button on the Home tab.
History Mixes show freshly created stats on your music taste:
- by month
- by year
- all-time favorites (throughout the entire time you’ve been subscribed to TIDAL).
TIDAL User Statistics
TIDAL is very secretive about its user count. There is some official data a couple years old. Others are approximate estimations.
- TIDAL claimed they have 3 million users in 2016.
However, TIDAL gained extra 1.2 million users (including the ones with free trials) at the release of the Beyoncé album “Lemonade,” which was an exclusive on the platform for 3 whole years (WhatHiFi).
Unfortunately, TIDAL doesn’t like to share subscriber data.
- TIDAL.com had 6.7 million monthly visits in January 2023.
That’s about the same monthly visits compared to January last year (Similarweb).
- 28.53% out of all TIDAL.com visitors come from the US.
Poland is a distant second with 7.64%, followed by the UK with 4.81% (Similarweb).
- TIDAL is the 2nd most downloaded music streaming app in Poland as of January 2022.
The TIDAL Music app was downloaded a total of 3.672.370 times.
The first spot goes to Spotify:
- 15.042.000 Spotify downloads
- 3.672.370 Tidal downloads
- 3.607.600 SoundCloud downloads
- Only 898 Deezer downloads
Like in other countries, Spotify takes the cake as the dominant music service (Statista 4).
- TIDAL was among the most daily used streaming services in Poland in 2020.
More than 47% of millennials in Poland used Spotify, Deezer, and TIDAL every day (Statista 5).
- TIDAL was the 9th most searched music streaming service worldwide in 2020.
On average, TIDAL was searched 0.9 million times per month, slightly surpassing Google Play Music (which no longer exists).
The most searched music streaming service was Spotify, with 26 million monthly searches (Statista 6).
TIDAL Market Share
- TIDAL has under 2% market share according to MIDiA Q2 2021 data.
From the MIDiA graph, 2% represents 10.5 million users, so the actual market share is even lower than that.
Based on Statista data from Q1 2021, TIDAL could even be below 1% market share (Statista 3).
More user stats on music streaming services:
TIDAL Music Statistics
Learn about:
- How large is TIDAL’s music catalog
- How much TIDAL pay per stream
- Which songs dominated music charts in 2021
How many songs does TIDAL have?
- TIDAL has over 80 million songs in its library.
On top of 350.000 music videos (TIDAL).
- TIDAL is available in 61 countries in 2022.
That’s less than half compared to Apple Music, which is available in 167 countries worldwide (TIDAL 2).
- TIDAL offers one of the highest streaming qualities in the business.
Tidal’s streaming sound quality ranges from:
- Normal: 160kbps (AAC)
- HiFi: 1411kbps (lossless) (44.1kHz/16-bit)
- Master: 2304-9216kbps (high-res) (96kHz/24-bit)
They also support different virtual surround mixes (Dolby Atmos, 360 Reality Audio) and an MQA technology (TIDAL 3).
How much does TIDAL pay per stream?
- TIDAL pays $0,0128 per stream to the artist.
That makes TIDAL one of the highest paying music streaming service, only lagging behind Napster, which pays $0,019, almost 1/3 more (Routenote).
What were top songs on Tidal?
The most listened songs on TIDAL in 2021 were:
- #1 “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo
- #2 “Save Your Tears” by Weeknd
- #3 “Without You” by KID LAROI
Check out the #1 song on TIDAL in 2021:
Source: (TIDAL 4)
Other TIDAL Stats
General stats about the TIDAL company and which artists own it.
- TIDAL was founded in 2014 in Oslo, Norway.
- TIDAL has 59 home audio partners in 2022 (TIDAL 5).
- TIDAL HiFi Plus plan ensures that 10% of subscriptions go directly to the user’s most-listened artist.
Moreover, TIDAL users can see how their listening habits impact their favorite artists (TIDAL).
Even more, TIDAL members can browse through a TIDAL Rising program, which promotes emerging new artists.
- Which artists own TIDAL?
Some of the biggest names in the music industry:
- Alicia Keys
- Win Butler and Regine Chassagne from Arcade Fire
- Beyoncé
- Calvin Harris
- Chris Martin from Coldplay
- Daft Punk
- Damian Marley
- Deadmau5
- Indochine
- J. Cole
- Jack White
- Jason Aldean
- Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter
- Kanye West
- Lil Wayne
- Madonna
- Nicki Minaj
- Rihanna
- T.I.
- Usher
Source: (TIDAL 6)
- Right after its launch in March 2015, the TIDAL app ranked top 20 iPhone apps in the United States.
However, only two weeks after, it has fallen out of the top 700 (Ballerstatus).
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is TIDAL better than Spotify?
So far, TIDAL supports higher-quality streams, better support for video content, and pays more per stream, whereas Spotify offers a ton of podcasts, has a larger user base, better-crafted playlists, new music discovery and social features, and offers a free version with ads.
Is TIDAL really free?
You can only get TIDAL for free via your mobile operator. Otherwise, there’s a free trial period for 30 days. There was also TIDAL Access, where you listened to a limited number of tracks on the home page, but the service no longer works.
Read more:
Conclusion
Hope you got all the info that you need. TIDAL likes to hide many of its financial and user usage information, so most numbers are coming from leaked documentation.
What else would you want to know about TIDAL? Do you know any other interesting info on the subject?
Please, leave us a comment down below.
Sources:
From a childhood fascination with sound, Peter’s passion has evolved into a relentless pursuit of the finest headphones. He’s an audio expert with over 5 years of experience in testing both audiophile and consumer-grade headphones. Quote: “After many years, I can confidently tell which headphones are good and which are terrible.” Find his honest opinion in his reviews.
4 Comments
Jflyte
Nice article, thank you for sharing. I am a big fan of Tidal and have been using it for years now. Hopefully more people will discover so that the artists can benefit.
HeadphonesAddict Team
Thanks for the nice words Jflyte.
Jeff Carrico
Great article. I’ve been a Tidal subscriber for about a year and a half and the high-resolution music tier sounds utterly fantastic. By purchasing a digital processor that can decode MQA, you can hear your music in a format that is noticeably clearer and much more dynamic than other services that stream in mp3 bitrates. And the fact that they pay artists more than most services is a plus.
Matija Ferjan
Thanks for letting us know Jeff. Yeah, it seems they’re a bit more artist friendly.