Last week, music streaming platform Tidal revealed a new function that has been designed to enable self-releasing artists to directly publish their music without the need for a middleman.
Simply named ‘Tidal Upload’ this straightforward new function of the high-fidelity streaming service allows artists, songwriters and creative stakeholders the means to upload their own tracks to Tidal's listening service with no fuss.
There’s one snag however - there’s no streaming royalties for your plays on the service. Even if you become the next big thing.
This is spelled out very clearly in Tidal’s FAQ, which plainly states - “No, your uploaded files do not earn royalties”.
However, beyond serving as a free route to get your music directly onto a global music streamer there are some financial incentives to self-publishing with Tidal Upload. And, to be honest, they're pretty tasty
Once tracks are finalised and published to Tidal, its editorial curators have a scan at what’s fresh that week. They will then choose a selection of tracks to place on its widely-listened to featured playlists.
Aside from the promise of more plays and recognition, the most alluring element of getting on to these playlists is what Tidal calls the ‘Spotlight Program’, which brings the potential to pocket $100 for every day that your track is featured there.
That’s not too shabby at all.
"Tracks are chosen based on quality and fit for our curated playlists and placements," state Tidal in its FAQ.
On top of that is the even more mouth-watering lump sum of $100,000, paid out via the Cash App (owned by Tidal's parent company Block) to each of ten independent (US-based) artists in early 2026, as part of the ‘Upload Headliners’ contest.
Again, winning independent artists are selected by Tidal’s editorial curators. This Upload Headliners contest is open right now and closes on December 31st and is only for US-based artists only, for now.
Tidal specifies that you can only upload tracks that you own the rights to, and that typical tagging and catalogue functions (as you might find on SoundCloud/Bandcamp etc) are present and correct, including editing track title, artist name, album art, release year and cover image.
Its DMCA-versed copyright algorithm is on the hunt for anything that violates Tidal's upload rules. Cover songs or tracks which use samples that have previously been allocated as an element of another track may be inadvertently targeted by it (and remixes might baffle it!) However Tidal’s Support system is on-hand to raise any disputes.
On the hot topic of AI, Tidal hasn't specified whether its rights-protecting algorithms will target AI-generated tracks. We’ll have to see what the long-term implications of this might be.
Essentially then, this is a model that is less based on a label-replacing music distribution service, such as DistroKid and TuneCore, and more based on SoundCloud’s artist-centric, direct-to-platform template, allowing users to upload and share work-in-progress tracks with collaborators privately as well as launching their music on Tidal immediately.
Tidal underlined this more ‘sharing-over-publishing’ philosophy in their social media announcement for the service by emphasising that Tidal Upload allows artists to share with a collaborator. By default, tracks upload publicly, but this can be decactivated and kept private by a toggle of the ‘Share on Tidal’ switch.
All individual files must not exceed 5GB in size, and artists can publish 200 tracks maximum. However, Tidal also stated that there is no overall storage limit (though this might change) and that private tracks can be shared with anybody, regardless of if they have a Tidal account or not.
So, on balance, Tidal Upload seems like something it’s well worth independent artists exploring - if not banking on as a sustainable route to make money from your music long term.
However, the chance to get your tracks featured and potentially earn you some dough, as well as that colossal sum up for grabs in the currently-running Upload Headliners contest is certainly worth a shot. After all, it’s free to upload so there’s nothing to lose.
At time of writing, Tidal Upload is free and just available in the US for artists 18 and older, but we’re assuming it’ll be rolled out to all international users in the near future, and similar contests will likely be ran going forward.
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