TIDAL is planning to launch a user-centric royalties system for a new $19.99 HiFi Plus membership option, Music Business Worldwide reports. Starting in 2022, the music streaming service is planning to adopt what it calls a 'Fan-centered royalties' approach where royalties attributed to HiFi Plus subscribers will be paid based on their individual streaming activity as opposed to the industry-standard method of aggregating streams and paying out to artists from a pool at the end of a payment period. TIDAL has also launched monthly direct-to-artist payments, which will see a percentage of HiFi Plus subscribers' membership fees directed towards their top streamed artist. TIDAL was acquired by Jack Dorsey's fintech firm Square earlier this year for over $300 million.

Routenote brings the numbers in - lists the ten largest music streaming services by number of tracks in their catalogue. The undisputable No. 1 is SoundCloud with 200 million songs, Deezer follows with 72 million songs, while the next five - Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify, Amazon, Qobuz - host around 70 million songs each. Napster follows with 60 million, while YouTube Music and KKBOX round up the Top 10 with 50 million songs each.

"If Square wants to create new ways to help musicians sell real goods and digital goods, it could just do that. Instead, Square is paying $300 million for a failed music service that doesn’t help it accomplish any of those goals" - Vox argues in an analysis of Square-Tidal deal which saw Jack Dorsey paying Jay-Z $300 million for his service. "So, what you’re really left with here is a deal that looks like a way for Jack Dorsey to move money from his publicly traded company to a company owned by a guy he likes to hang out with" - Vox concludes. Variety did the math on 16 artist stakeholders of Tidal - Jay Z, Beyonce, Kanye West (pictured above), Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Jason Aldean, Madonna, Jack White, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler & Régine Chassagne, Usher, Nicki Minaj, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Calvin Harris, deadmau5, J. Cole and Daft Punk - who should expect to pocket $8.91 million apiece from this deal.

Jack Dorsey's digital-payments processor Square is buying a majority stake in Tidal, Jay-Z's music streaming platform, for $297 million, through a mix of cash and stock, The New York Times reports. The move is set to bring Jay-Z to Square's board of directors. Jay-Z bought Tidal in 2015 for $56 million.