Actually, you can only publish if you're registered with one of four record labels: https://tidalsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201167132...

That says unsigned artists must register with one of those four services. From their web page, the first one listed (https://www.recordunion.com/) is a digital distribution company that charges under $15/year to interface with an online store on the artist's behalf.

If an artist is signed to a label then it's on the label to have a working relationship with the online stores and streaming services.

So... they have to pay $15 a year for someone else to upload their music?

This is normal. I think Pandora and Grooveshark are the only services that don't require a distributor for unsigned artists.

None of those companies are labels, they are all distributors - I suspect in short order you will see more of the major distributors on board, e.g. The Orchard, InGrooves, and possibly some of the commodity style ones too like TuneCore and CD Baby

When artists make it big, don't they usually start their own labels anyways? We also have rich artists very active in the music industry, providing capital and such...I mean, it is the industry they known and succeeded in!

This is sort of like a programmer who made it big in an IPO becoming a venture capitalist for software tech companies: I'm sure that has happened before.

Yup.

I can't speak for the others, but both Jay Z & Kanye are very heavy into promoting new artists.

Jay essentially created two of the men standing up there (J Cole & Kanye), and Kanye has been instrumental in pushing Big Sean, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, and Chief Keef among others into the limelight.

They, along with birdman & lil wayne are the biggest promoters of new artists in the rap game.

> I think he meant, "This is a platform owned by established, rich, and ageing artists, whose resolve to assist up-and-comers should rightfully be questioned."

An actual artist-owned platform (a co-operative model where artists = shareholders) would actually be pretty awesome.

> But one executive involved in the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deals were private, said that participating artists were being granted shares in exchange for their good-faith efforts to supply exclusive content

I think the problem with an artist-owned platform is that I actually want the platform to be agnostic in terms of what is actually surfaced. When I open Rdio, I can see what's popular amongst everyone, my network, or just me. I don't want that to be affected by the owners also being the product.

What really concerns me is the double-talk.

> “I just want to be an alternative,” Jay Z said. “They don’t have to lose for me to win.”

But the strategy is clearly going to be largely based on exclusive content. This doesn't mean Rdio and spotify lose, it means the fans lose because they have to spend the time and energy they would normally put into enjoying music towards weighing the different streaming options.

I guess Jay said it best: "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man." That's the artist that owns this "artist-owned" platform.

Up-and-coming artists seem to be quite happy with Bandcamp these days.