The Jay-Z-founded streaming platform TIDAL saw its revenues grow 13.1% in 2019, according to a new financial document filed by parent company Project Panther Bidco in the UK.
That took TIDAL’s total revenue that year up to $166.9m, but represented a slowing on the 26.4% rise the service saw in 2018.
Once again, TIDAL posted an annual operating loss in 2019, this time of $55.3m. That represented an increase in operating loss of 50.6% from the $36.7m figure posted in 2018.
One interesting angle on all of this is how much ground a rival music streaming service, SoundCloud, made up on TIDAL in 2019.
In 2018, SoundCloud’s UK-filed financial accounts reveal that the company posted annual revenues of €108m, or $127m at timely exchange rates.
Obviously, that was just over $20m behind TIDAL’s $147.6m annual revenues that year.
Yet in 2019, SoundCloud saw its revenues bound forward by 37% year-on-year, up to the equivalent of $166m.
As mentioned, TIDAL’s revenues in those same 12 months were a smidgen ahead on $166.9m – but there clearly wasn’t much between the annual turnover of the two services.
Did SoundCloud’s revenues overtake TIDAL’s in 2020? We’ll have to wait for their respective accounts to be filed in the UK to confirm, but don’t bet against it.
SoundCloud’s operating losses in 2019 were significantly smaller than TIDAL’s – in fact, around half the size – at $26.7m.
SoundCloud partly credited a feature of its platform that TIDAL doesn’t share for its 2019 performance: the ability for paying SoundCloud users to upload directly to the service and, via Repost Network, to also distribute their audio via SoundCloud to other platforms.
You can see TIDAL’s main 2019 fiscal numbers (via Project Panther Bidco Ltd.) above, or read its full financial report , obtained by MBW, through here. Music Business Worldwide
