Inside TIDAL Artist Home: Insights from the Experts

From the beginnings, TIDAL has stood out as an artist-first, fan-centered music streaming platform dedicated to empowering musicians. Designed in collaboration with artists, TIDAL Artist Home allows musicians and their teams to directly manage their TIDAL profiles, offering valuable insights and resources to help them grow their careers and connect with fans. In this interview, IDOL spoke with Agustina Sacerdote, Global Head of Product for TIDAL, to discuss the latest TIDAL Artist Home feature, which enables artists to take control of their careers and make a living from their art.

TIDAL Artist Home hosts a growing selection of tools and features that help artists and songwriters grow their careers by making it easier for them to manage their public presence, catalog, network, and fanbase. Available to access on desktop.

By claiming their profile, artists can directly manage how they show up to their fans in the TIDAL streaming app through personalization of their profile picture, biography, and social media links. In addition to being able report inaccurate content on their streaming page to TIDAL artist services, they can also view insights about their music and fans, connect and collaborate with TIDAL-recommended artists with TIDAL Collabs, join the RISING community, and assign permissions to team members to manage their profile.

Today, we’re excited to launch a brand new experience on TIDAL Artist Home for songwriters.

Songwriters are critical contributors to music and culture yet remain an underserved community in the music industry. Our new songwriter tools help songwriters receive the royalties and recognition they’re entitled to from their catalog, streamlining a historically fragmented process.

Within TIDAL Artist Home, songwriters get visibility into their full catalog of works and recordings, helping them confidently manage their credits and get compensated correctly.

Today, songwriters must navigate numerous collection societies, publishing platforms, royalty management services, streaming services, and single-purpose apps to manage their royalties, careers, and catalog. It can be incredibly challenging to understand what royalties they are entitled to and what they must do to collect everything that is owed to them. The lack of clear guidance, duplication of registration processes across different collection societies, and lack of transparency in the industry all create a level of complexity that can be overwhelming.

The royalty landscape and collection process can be confusing even to those who are deeply immersed in the space. We solve key royalty obstacles by helping songwriters:

Get registered: In the US, songwriters must be registered with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO) and the Mechanical Licencing Collective (MLC) to receive key composition royalties. Songwriters without a publishing deal must also register as a self-publisher. If you haven’t registered with a PRO as a songwriter or as a self publisher, you can do so with our integrated partner AllTrack right within TIDAL Artist Home and get guidance on joining the MLC.

Understand their catalog: Many songwriters don’t have a clear understanding of the current health and status of their works. We make it easy to quickly review your catalog and identify any metadata gaps and mismatches that should be fixed within each work. Our new tools help songwriters ensure all their works are correctly identified, attributed, and collected in one place.

Manage collaborations: When cowriting tracks, key information can fall through the cracks, leading to lost royalties. TIDAL Artist Home lets you review co-writers and their IPI numbers and create signable split sheets that track and verify ownership on each song. Regardless of which co-writer registers the works, songwriters can have peace of mind that their contributions are being compensated accurately.

Our songwriter tools leverage clear guidance, approachable design, and powerful functionality to bring simplicity to works registration and royalty collection. Checklists can be found through the platform that make sure songwriters are following the right steps to get set up for success with collection bodies and are maximizing the value of their works. In addition, we help songwriters understand and manage their metadata which is what ultimately captures their contribution on any track. Songwriters can easily view and manage their credits and metadata in TIDAL Artist Home to ensure their works are correctly matched and registered, helping them accurately earn money. At each stage, songwriters are guided with additional information that helps them better understand the role it plays in ensuring they receive maximum payouts.

A large reason for the breakdown of trust between artists and the industry is the lack of transparency – creators often feel a lack of control over their careers in a space that, at times, feels purposefully opaque. Our tools aim to give songwriters greater visibility into their catalogs and empower them to feel informed, organized, and in control of their success. By having direct access to the management of their works, songwriters can have a greater sense of confidence and ownership while having peace of mind that their catalog is being monetized accurately.

Independent artists and songwriters, especially those who are unmanaged, are expected to navigate a range of platforms and providers to register and manage works. Without the support of a publisher, the fragmented process can be overwhelming and creates stagnation for writers who are already juggling the challenges of creating quality work, forming a network, building a fanbase, and supporting themselves financially.

TIDAL’s new tools bring much needed clarity to industry processes and help independent songwriters organize their professional identity and optimize their works all in one place.

The TIDAL team is made up of true music fans based around the world. Many have been working directly with artists for decades and are closely in-tune with the needs and challenges of new, upcoming, and established artists. This is a key part of our culture. Our deep industry experience and daily conversations with artists help us stay in touch with trends and shifts and directly impact the constantly growing set of tools and programs we create for music creators on TIDAL Artist Home.

• US based songwriters can claim a songwriter profile here
• If you have any question about how to get started with TIDAL Artist Home, it’s here
• Read our article on the job of royalties manager
• Read our article on IDOL’s Digital Rights management expertise