Nipsey Hussle recently released a documentary detailing his come up and his recent signing with Atlantic Records to Tidal, and now he’s given a compelling reason why he made the switch and you should too. While Jay-Z was one of Nipsey’s earliest supporters, buying 100 copies of Nip’s $100 mixtape, Crenshaw, the reason has a lot more to do with math than their personal relationship.
While streaming numbers and royalty formulas appear to be a tightly kept secret with many services, Nipsey decided to forego the “open secret” code that seems to govern streaming services’ utility to artists and detail exactly what an independent artist can expect from each. He opened his tweet accounting “ATTENTION EVERYONE,” before listing the payouts from each streaming service for 1 million streams.
1 Million Streams on YouTube = $690
1 Million Streams on Spotify = $4,370
1 Million Streams on Apple Music = $7,350
1 Million Streams on @Tidal = $12,500
1 Million Streams on Amazon Music = $4,020
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” he concluded, “Just sign up for Tidal.”
https://twitter.com/NipseyHussle/status/953017337795436544
One of the earliest selling points for Tidal when Jay-Z first purchased the service was that it would compensate artists more fairly than other existing services at the time. And while it appears that the formula still allows for larger payouts, that hasn’t prevented Tidal from experiencing some backlash for its tallying procedure and legal troubles stemming from artist disputes over short-paid royalties. So while Nipsey does have a point, it seems that artists will need to continue to carefully watch their accounting statements if they want to be paid fairly for their work.
