One day to Tidal’s one-year anniversary relaunch – March 30 – the streaming service is releasing its subscribers numbers. In its first year, Tidal claims to have passed three million paid subscribers globally, adding about 2.5 million subscribers to the approximately 540,000 it had when it launched in the U.S.
Of those subscribers, 45 percent, or around 1.35 million, have signed up for its hi-fidelity, lossless audio/video tier, which costs $19.99 per month as opposed to its regular $9.99/month tier. Those fans pay for access to almost 40 million tracks and 130,000 music videos, as well as its live streams, exclusive premieres and original video content series. While three million subscribers is certainly a win for Tidal in 12 months, it still lags behind its biggest competitors in the streaming space; Apple Music, which launched last June, claims 11 million paid subscribers, while Spotify CEO Daniel Ek just announced last week that his service hit the 30 million subscriber mark, adding five million in the first few months of 2016.
Tidal has also finally released numbers for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo streams for the first time, after he requested the service withhold the numbers when the album first became available in February. According to Tidal, Pablo surpassed 250 million streams in its first 10 days of release. Pablo, which Ye previously said would only ever exist on Tidal, has been going through some changes. Just yesterday he made the single “Famous,” featuring Rihanna, available on both Apple Music and Spotify, ending his Tidal-only crusade.
In other Tidal-related news, the service now boasts 20 artist-owners, up from the 16 it started with. French band Indochine becomes the latest addition, after Lil Wayne, Damian Marley and TIP (aka T.I.) all signed on in recent months. Jay Z, Beyonce, Rihanna, West, Madonna and more were all present at the launch event as the service’s original artist-owners.
My two-cents: I’m sorry, I don’t necessarily believe these numbers. I signed up for Tidal in Jan for the release of Rihanna’s ANTI. To this I still haven’t paid to be a subscriber because the company (thankfully) has continued to extended my free access. Therefore, I shouldn’t be counted as a subscriber. Let’s hope they’re not counting users like myself as that would be fraudulent.
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