No doubt the current streaming model is only friendly to the streaming services, but we wonder what Universal and Tidal are cooking up for Tidal's streaming platform to make it more lucrative for an artist and more satisfying to a fan.
Tuesday (January 31), TIDAL and UMG announced plans to research how, by “harnessing fan engagement”, music services and platforms can “generate greater commercial value for every type of artist”.
They add in their announcement that their research will extend to how different economic models “could accelerate subscriber growth, deepen retention, and better monetize fandom to the benefit of artists and the broader music community”.
“THIS PARTNERSHIP WILL ENABLE US TO RETHINK HOW WE CAN SUSTAINABLY IMPROVE ROYALTIES’ DISTRIBUTION FOR THE BREADTH OF ARTISTS ON OUR PLATFORM.” JESSE DOROGUSKER, TIDAL
It has always been odd to us that streaming services offer nothing more than the ability to listen to a song. Music has always been an interactive experience. The excitement of going out to purchase physical music, the unpackaging of the vinyl, or cassette, or CD or whatever you purchased, playing it, singing along, reading the credits and liner notes, dancing to it. This has been reduced down to press play and then perhaps sing/dance along. For a long time, you couldn't even really see the credits, you still can't read liner notes, the artist's thank yous, you can't see all the photos from the photo shoot for the project. Aside from the portability of listening to songs on your phone, streaming sucks.
“As the digital landscape continues to evolve, it’s become increasingly clear that music streaming’s economic model needs innovation to ensure a vibrant and sustainable future.” Michael Nash, UMG
If Tidal and Universal are working on ways to let a fan do all of these things as well as adding video, and digital collectibles, the ability to order physical music from the streaming page, and merch, all to an artist's page on the streaming service, then that could be game changing. But it seems like it would only be so for Universal artists, no? What about the rest of the artist community??
We are staying tuned to hear more.
Comments