Why Jack Dorsey’s Tidal is focusing on building new DJ tools and content in 2025Which digital streaming platform values DJ the most right now? Among the major players, you’d likely think of Apple Music as the champion of DJs, with its Boiler Room partnership, new Club radio station, and a regular flow of DJ mixes from acclaimed artists. Spotify, meanwhile, rolled out its AI DJ feature in 2023, which has been less well-received. But Tidal — now owned by Twitter founder and Block Inc chairman Jack Dorsey, who acquired it from Jay-Z in 2021 for $297 million — believes it’s the frontrunner in supporting the careers and artistry of DJs.
“DJs play a vital role in the music industry, not only as curators but also as creators, who often transition into roles such as music producers, songwriters and performing artists,” says Seattle-based Dan Murphy, head of partnerships at Tidal. As a DJ who confesses that he’s “very, very early” on in his hobby, Murphy and the Tidal team have found that DJing can be an attractive entry into the music industry, but they’ve also discovered that not everyone sticks around for long after spinning their first tune.
“Our data shows that around 50 per cent of first-time DJs quit within the first six months,” Murphy says. “And the reason is, it’s difficult to be a DJ.”
To encourage more beginner disc jockeys to keep at it — and to get more pro DJs using its service — Tidal has amped up its offering of DJ-focused content in the past five years or so. That doesn’t just include more DJ mixes on the platform, but also means integrating the service into DJ software such as Serato, Rekordbox, Algoriddim DJay and even Tribe XR. Plus it now hosts  a library of sound effects, weekly updated charts, launched the Artist Home, and partnered with DJ brands such as AlphaThera to provide educational content to new DJs so they can learn the basics from day one.
Image: Tidal
Once a DJ has honed their skills, they may even get a shot to join the Tidal Rising program.
Chicago-based artist Ariel Zetina, who was the first DJ to join Tidal Rising in 2023, says that she’s “eternally grateful” for Tidal’s support. “The music industry is so vast, and my primary source of income is in a gig-based nightlife economy. Tidal Rising has allowed me to meet and hear from professionals in more fields (such as music publishing and songwriting). [Being on the program] lets a larger audience see and respect your work.”
The program, which selects just over a dozen artists per year, is designed to provide grassroots acts with direct-funding opportunities, marketing support, playlist coverage and more. It’s also been an early supporter of some pretty high-profile acts, from Dua Lipa and Teddy Swims to LP Giobbi and beyond.
“I mean, being in the same program as Megan Thee Stallion and Chloe x Halle? Incredible,” adds Zetina.
Image: Tidal
Murphy says that Tidal’s goal is, and always has been, to “create a music platform that empowers artists to find success on their own terms.”
“We’ve always been artists first, ever since Jay-Z acquired Tidal back in 2015.” (That high-profile relaunch in 2015 included appearances and on-stage signatories including Daft Punk, deadmau5, Madonna, Calvin Harris, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.) “We serve artists as our primary customers, and DJs are artists, and therefore an extension of this focus for us.”
With Dorsey at the helm, the company is now looking at its artist userbase in a similar fashion to how its sister companies, Square and Cash App. Murphy says that Square has been building a customer base of independent businesses with its point of sale products, and that Cash App has helped individuals find simpler ways to manage their finances. Now, Tidal wants to “give emerging artists direct ways to manage their business identity,” and “help them run their careers like a business,” Murphy adds.
Image: Tidal
The elephant in the room is that Tidal is by no means the most popular DSP, with a reported 2.1 million subscribers in 2020, which Spotify beats by about 300 times with its 640 million users. And with a standard Tidal subscription costing around the same as a Spotify subscription at $11 per month ($20 with a DJ subscription), can it really support artists with better royalties? According to Viberate, the service does offer the most royalties per stream at $0.0125 to $0.015. But the value in Tidal for artists, says Murphy, lies in its other offerings.
Tidal is renowned for its catalogue of lossless format, hosting over 110 million tracks in HiRes, FLAC and Dolby Atmos with offline listening. Currently, the platform is publishing 200,000 new HiRes tracks every week. This is a potential boon to DJs— by integrating Tidal into their workflow, they have instant access to this massive library of lossless tracks.
Elsewhere, Tidal’s Artist Home portal, launched in 2023, is a hub for artists to control their profiles on the platform. Tidal Collabs, meanwhile, encourages artists to discover and connect with recommended collaborators, leveraging different fan bases. There are also songwriter tools that allow them to manage their credits and ensure accurate compensation.

Murphy explains that, in the past year, Tidal has invested in expanding this toolset with DJs squarely in mind.
Now, with BPM and key signature metadata, DJs using Tidal can find new tracks on the fly to fit the music they’re playing. Tidal became the first streaming platform to officially license stems from record labels for use in DJ software and hardware (such as Denon DJ and Numark gear), meaning you can mix various elements of a track in real-time.
Data is playing a major role, too. Tidal’s vision is that artists and DJs will be able to check where and how often their music has been played by DJs, offering insight into potential new markets and territories. “We want to give artists insights that treat them and help them run their careers like a business,” adds Murphy.
Tidal launch event #TIDALforALL at Skylight at Moynihan Station on March 30, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images For Roc Nation)
On paper, this all sounds pretty impressive. Intriguingly, though, the star-studded line-up of advocates at the 2015 relaunch of Tidal has remained relatively quiet about the platform. Despite these flashy new tools, the dance acts among them — deadmau5, Daft Punk, Calvin Harris — have barely supported Tidal publicly since signing those contracts onstage for a 3 per cent share in the company. Does Tidal need these big artists to start pushing the platform again to be successful?
Dorsey doesn’t think so. When discussing whether Tidal would lean on such big artists advocating the platform, he took to Twitter in 2021 to say: “We’re going to start small and focus on the most critical needs of artists and growing their fanbases.”
In 2025, Tidal seems ready to extend these offerings to DJs. “Success, for me,” says Murphy, “is that Tidal becomes a consideration and part of every DJ’s toolkit; whether it’s access to content, [finding] inspiration, giving them new tools that are powered by a Tidal subscription…but I think more importantly, that we truly do help DJs grow and manage their career again.”
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