Finally a company that is not forcing ai slop on their customers.

I hope this gets implemented well for the sake of all the artists.

Edit: Sorry had to delete the old post because I leaked some personal information by accident.

UK indie band Los Campesinos have put Instagram and blog posts detailing how much they got paid by streamers for their last albums. It’s interesting generally but worth noting Tidal is well above others.

https://loscampesinos.com/heres-how-much-money-los-camp-make-from-streaming/

https://www.instagram.com/p/DR0EpgYDQoZ/

The popup appeared few hours after an update. ​

The band will remove their catalogue, protesting Spotify’s CEO funding AI-driven war tech.

After listening to flac files via VLC I couldn't justify paying $20+ for low/poor quality music from Spotify. ChatGPT suggested Tidal so here I am. Can finally utilize the full power of my XM5s

For all of you wondering just how hard Spotify fucks artists / compared to Tidal: here's my payouts so far with the approximate amount of streams that resulted in those numbers. Specific payout blurred for TOS reasons.

Interactive credits are back and you can now change profile pictures the right way.

Also, this is the whole policy:

AI music generation tools are changing how music is created and distributed. As this technology evolves, Tidal is introducing platform standards to protect artists, their craft, and inform listeners. Here is our current policy on AI-generated music on Tidal:

Tidal defines AI-generated music as music that is wholly or substantially generated by generative artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are not new to music creation, they have just become more commonplace and advanced. Our policy as it relates to AI-generated music is intended to capture recent developments in — and the rapid proliferation of — text-prompted AI music generation.

Tidal will accept AI-generated music. Artists should have the freedom to create with AI tools, and listeners should have the autonomy to choose the type of content they consume. Due to the problems associated with the influx of AI-generated content, we will hold AI-generated content to a higher standard of content integrity. Tidal will therefore accept AI-generated music, provided it meets the standards laid out in this policy and our terms and conditions, as well as in our agreements with rightsholders and distributors.

Tidal will identify and tag AI-generated music. Listeners should know whether content they are listening to is AI-generated. To start, listeners will see an icon next to content we identify as 100% AI-generated. This feature will start appearing for listeners in mid-July. As AI-detection methods become more reliable, we will expand this tag to content that is substantially AI-generated. But the responsibility to identify and tag AI-generated content should not rest with Tidal alone. We expect — and will begin to enforce — that content distributors identify AI-generated content before it reaches our platform.

Tidal will hold AI-generated music to a higher standard of content integrity. We will not tolerate AI-generated music that exploits an individual’s or group’s music, name or likeness, deceives listeners, or diminishes the quality of our service. Effective mid-July, AI-generated music associated with fraudulent activity will be blocked or removed from our platform. Fraudulent activity includes (but is not necessarily limited to) AI-generated music that aims to deceive listeners, interfere with authentic artists and their audience, or involves high-volume uploads or unusual streaming activity. We reserve the right in our sole discretion to determine if AI-generated music is being distributed primarily for fraudulent purposes.

Starting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable. We are only in the beginning of the era of AI-generated music. We acknowledge the ongoing debate regarding whether certain AI-generated music (e.g. AI-generated music developed from fairly and properly licensed models) should be entitled to earn royalties. This debate will continue as the technology advances and rightsholders and AI music platforms develop licensing models. Tidal’s priority is ensuring royalties go to original works directly produced, written, and performed by people. We will therefore not knowingly attribute royalties to music we identify as wholly AI-generated.

Tidal Upload content will be held to the same standards. Tidal Upload is for independent artists to upload and monetize their content on their own terms. Because Upload content is available to Tidal listeners alongside catalog content, it will be held to the same standards as catalog content. If we have reason to believe that Upload content is wholly AI-generated, it will be tagged as such, and blocked from direct-to-fan monetization.

I've seen too many friends using only Bluetooth headphones when listening to music and not even realising that it's a poor listening experience, heartbreaking. I learned this fact first hand because the headphones I own have both a cable and Bluetooth option, and cable just sounds so much better. With the Tidal higher quality audio options it's honestly incredible and doesn't compare at all.

Like it was previously mentioned. You can hide out all the content labeled with the AI tag that will appear around July 15th with that toggle.

Why TF does the sound quality button look like it came from 2005 on the new UI

Hi there - Agustina, TIDAL product team lead.

Many of you have received (or will receive) an email notification from TIDAL informing you of important updates to our pricing and subscriptions. As loyal listeners and advocates for our artist-first vision and what we are building, I wanted to share some context on what’s changing and why.

On April 10, 2024, we’re updating our pricing for TIDAL globally. All of our premium audio formats will be available on a single subscription tier for $10.99 USD a month that we’re simply calling TIDAL. Two other significant changes are 1/ we are making DJ integrations available as a new add-on (to the individual TIDAL subscription) for $9 USD a month, and 2/ we are retiring our Military, First Responder and free plans. Let me share some context behind these changes.

We work with rightsholders to be able to provide reliable access to their catalogue - whether you’re listening to music on our app or accessing the TIDAL catalogue via our partners, including DJ software providers. Changes in our agreements with rightsholders impact our pricing. As it relates to DJ integrations: our latest agreements give us approval for DJ integrations, but not in a way that enables us to include them in our standard subscription. As part of this add-on, however, we’re bringing back stem separation and other new features built specifically for the DJ community - we’ll have more to share in the coming weeks! With regard to our Military and First Responder plans, we do not receive sufficient discounts from rightsholders to offer these plans.

We know that these changes will be well received by some, and be difficult for others. We made these decisions guided by our goal of making TIDAL accessible to more fans, while continuing to invest in creating new, meaningful sources of income for artists around the world.

So since the new update bringing in the "Max" quality, and hiding the MQA identifiers on songs etc. I have seen so much confusion around what's actually going on. I'm putting together everything I have found so far regarding the update into this post to hopefully help clarify things for people.

I am going to refer to the qualities behind Max as MQA and HiRes (the new format). Most but not all tidal songs support up to the High quality (previously HiFi) below Max which is always 16bit 44.1kHz.

I will be ignoring the Atmos quality.

What is Max?

• Max Quality is only available to be played on the Official Tidal Apps currently, and only the desktop app is capable of Exclusive playback (with exception of some third-party apps).

• Max Quality can be either MQA or HiRes or Both.

• All songs that previously had MQA versions still do, many now also have HiRes.

• When you select Max in the new apps if HiRes quality exists it will always play that even if MQA exists (with exception to third-party apps which do not have access to HiRes yet).

• Third party or non updated apps work exactly the same as before and can and will still play MQA quality, but cannot play HiRes yet.

Presumably (speculation) part of why tidal is keeping the MQA format around is for support until these third-party apps are able to update to play the new HiRes format. I'm not sure if app developers have the ability to update yet.

What is HiRes?

• The new HiRes format is anything above 16bit 44.1kHz. So far I have not found any HiRes songs that are not 24bit, the sample rate however can be anything from 44.1kHz up to 192kHz. I have found songs at every step.

• When comparing HiRes songs on Tidal to Qobuz as far as I can tell, most are identical files.

• Not all songs that have MQA have HiRes, while a large number do, there are still some songs that only have MQA.

• Many songs that previously did not have MQA now have HiRes and only HiRes, this is not a small number of songs either.

• While I haven't been able to test it properly, from what I can tell HiRes even when only 24b 44.1kHz has a noticeably higher bitrate compared to MQA and High.

Let me pick MQA/HiRes instead of just Max!

Because some songs are only HiRes, some only MQA and many HiRes & MQA having only a "Max" quality selector kinda makes sense. If tidal split them up, how do you deal with situations where one quality is available and not the other.

The only real downside to this is you can no longer explicitly play MQA over HiRes, but HiRes is better quality than MQA anyway. I also suspect (speculation) that Tidal is intending to eventually remove MQA all together once its got HiRes for all existing MQA tracks and doing it this way would make that much easier.

Display the sample rate & bit depth next to songs like other platforms!

While tidal does not currently do this, my plugin does! You can read more about it here: r/TIdaL/what_the_bitrate

I do think Tidal should show the current Sample Rate/Bit Depth the output device is running at (like other apps) for those who don't have a DAC with a display.

Display the quality next to songs like they used to with MQA!

Currently all the Tidal apps no longer display if a song is MQA. I assume it was not replaced by a Max tag due to the mixed formats. The obvious fix is having two tags, one for HiRes and one for MQA, they don't even need to display both when both exist since Max always plays HiRes if its there anyway!

The list of qualities a song has is still returned from the tidal API, all Tidal needs to do is a UI update on their apps to actually display the information. Hopefully even if they don't eventually do this third-party apps once updated will do so.

As part of my testing I threw together the Extension/Plugin (mentioned above) for the Tidal app that adds quality tags to songs. More info at r/TIdaL/what_the_bitrate. I have been this using as a guide to assist my testing using the Desktop App for exclusive playback. You can see what it looks like in the screenshot above.

Albums have a quality indicator next to them that says HIGH or MAX.

These are effectively useless. HIGH is displayed if a album has no HiRes songs (even if it has MQA ones) and MAX is displayed if a album has a HiRes song. So a album with a single HiRes song and the rest a mix of say High and MQA will display as MAX.

Further testing has shown that even this can be inconsistent. TLDR don't trust the Album Quality Tags!

High quality is just Folded MQA!

This is no longer true for any tracks that now have both a MQA and HiRes version.

If a track only has a MQA version then the High quality version will be Folded MQA and identical to the MQA version.

If a track has either both MQA and HiRes versions or just a HiRes version then the High quality is its own file at 16bit 44.1kHz.

How did I find all this information?

Song Sample Rate/Bit Depth: I use my plugin which shows the current Bitrate/Sample Rate/Bit Depth for any track.

I can sanity check this (though its not needed) using VB-Audio ASIO Bridge and pointing tidal at it in exclusive mode I can view the Sample Rate and Bit Depth that is being played for any song.

Currently the only way to view this information is by checking what Tidal sets your DAC to in Exclusive Mode.

Song Quality: Using my extension I can easily see what quality songs are, it uses the same data I assume was previously used to add the MQA tags to songs.

This can be sanity checked by checking the Sample Rate/Bit Depth using the above method where High is always 16bit 44.1kHz, HiRes is anything above that, usually 24bit and MQA will always half the sample rate when Passthrough MQA is turned on in the Tidal Settings disabling software unfolding. This only works on DAC's that don't support MQA unfolding.

Third-Party Apps: I use the Android player USB Audio Player PRO (great app btw) to get bit perfect exclusive playback to my DAC from my phone (since the Tidal android app doesn't support it). This is a third party app, it still displays the MQA tags for songs and still plays them the same as before the Max rollout.

When asked about when they will support the new format I was told: "As soon as TIDAL allows third parties to access HiRes PCM, we will add it.".

Qobuz vs Tidal HiRes: Looking at song metadata, sample rate/bit depth and also testing a song that I know has a audible difference between the 24bit 192kHz and Tidals old MQA/High quality HiRes songs on Tidal are using the same files Qobuz.

This also makes sense since presumably (speculation) HiRes is just the files directly received from the record companies/artists etc.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

So that's it! Hopefully that helps clarify a lot of things. If anyone has any questions please comment them I would be happy to discuss things.