Anyone can make money on Spotify, and Tidal is owned by the "top, top artist"s. Spotify payouts are based on the number of streams, so obviously smaller artists will have less streams and thus get paid less. The same goes for any other music distribution platform including physical record sales. Also, artists are more likely to gain exposure on Spotify as their curated playlists and artist playlists allow bigger artists or Spotify's curators to give smaller artists exposure through their playlists. The discover algorithm does a great job of exposing me to small and new artists that I wouldn't have found without it.

I've tried Tidal, Apple Music, Google Music, Prime Music, Rdio (when that was a thing) and have always gone back to Spotify because the put a lot more effort into getting smaller/newer artists records in front of users.