By Tyler Friedman ’17, Staff Writer

From exclusive album releases to staggeringly low compensation rates for artists, music streaming services have been making headlines. The three main services, Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal, are constantly competing with one another, and some artists are choosing sides in this battle.

All of this attention and controversy surrounding these three services started when Taylor Swift pulled her entire music catalog from Spotify in 2014. She did so because she felt that the compensation she, and all other artists with music on the platform, were receiving was unfair and insufficient. According to a Time Magazine article released shortly after Swift’s decision, artists receive about $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream[1]. Based on the calculations of a similar article from The Verge, in order for the artists and any other rights holders to earn the $10 they would normally earn if their album were sold on a traditional digital download platform such as iTunes, they would need 1,190 streams (of an individual track, not of the full album)[2]. As the article points out, Spotify’s Year in Music feature indicated that most peoples’ number of streams for their top streamed artist was around 300-500 streams per year. Following this trend, some major artists such as Thom Yorke and the Black Keys have chosen to withhold certain albums from Spotify specifically.

Although Tidal had existed prior to this, this streaming service truly established its place in the music industry once Jay Z purchased Tidal’s parent company, Aspiro. On March 30, 2015, Jay Z relaunched Tidal at a press conference, along with sixteen artists, including Beyoncé, Kanye West, and Nicki Minaj, who were introduced as “the owners of Tidal.” Tidal claims that their royalty rates per stream for artists are the highest of any music streaming platform. Many artists, mainly co-owners of Tidal, have chosen to release albums exclusively to Tidal, at least for a period of time before releasing them on other platforms. Some artists that have done this include Beyoncé, whose visual album Lemonade, released April 23, 2016, was exclusively streamed on Tidal before being released on other platforms (note: Lemonade is still unavailable on Spotify). In their most recent official statement (March 2016), Tidal claimed they have three million paying subscribers,[3] but these numbers have grown rapidly as a result of Lemonade’s exclusive Tidal release.

Finally, on June 30, 2015, Apple launched their streaming service, Apple Music. This service was released under the premise that subscribers would have access to both on-demand streaming and pre-made playlists created by music experts. Apple Music gained the alliance of Spotify enemy Taylor Swift, who originally did not want to release her album 1989 on Apple Music, but shortly changed her mind after Apple reportedly responded constructively to her complaints. Apple Music, similarly to Tidal, has featured exclusive album releases, such as Frank Ocean’s long awaited album Blonde, which was released exclusively on Apple Music on August 20, 2016, and was only just made available on Spotify on September 9. As of April 2016, Apple Music claims 13 million paying subscribers.[4]

But have the attacks on Spotify affected its success? Numbers would indicate no. As of August 2016, Spotify claims 39 million paying subscribers.[5] It is also important to note that Spotify explicitly states on their website that their royalty plan for artists is not on a pay-per-stream basis; rather, they pay out about 70% of their revenue to artists and other music rights holders.[6] Even though it would seem like the odds are stacked against them, Spotify still seems to be pulling far ahead of its competitors.

[1] http://time.com/3590670/spotify-calculator/

[2] http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861372/spotify-year-in-review-artist-payment-royalties

[3] http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7317826/tidal-three-million-global-subscribers-kanye-west-pablo-streams

[4] http://www.techtimes.com/articles/154079/20160427/apple-music-now-has-13-million-paying-subscribers-how-the-numbers-compare-with-other-music-streaming-services.htm

[5] http://www.statista.com/statistics/244995/number-of-paying-spotify-subscribers/

[6] https://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/