Tidal (service)

Tidal (stylized 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.