Tidal introduces Circles, a social network for musicians to discuss their experiences in the industry

Users are able to contribute to discussions either anonymously or using their name.

Streaming platform Tidal is slowly introducing Circles – an artist-to-artist forum – to a small number of creators.

Currently, Circles is in early access and is only open to artists in the Tidal Rising programme and general rising artists using Tidal Artist Home. No further details on when it will become more widely available have yet been shared.

As reported by Digital Trends, Tidal describes Circles as an “artist-to-artist forum for artists to discuss their career experiences and connect with their peers on how to navigate the music industry”. The artist umbrella includes musicians, DJs, and anyone else who creates content on the platform who have claimed their artist page on Tidal.

Once you’ve registered for the new social network, you can then browse four main forum topics. These are: Touring & Booking, Fans & Social, Merchandise, and Music Creation. Users are also able to contribute to discussions under their own name or anonymously, but interactions are moderated.

Last summer, Tidal rolled out hi-res FLAC (free lossless audio codec) streaming on its platform. Playback in up to 24-bit/192kHz quality was made available to Tidal’s Early Access Programme (EAP) users on iOS.

The following winter, Tidal’s parent company, Block, Inc., announced it would lay off 10 percent of the Tidal workforce, with the company founder Jack Dorsey stating, “The growth of our company has far outpaced the growth of our business,” in November.

Currently, Spotify is the most popular music streaming platform in the world, with over 350 million users globally. The platform pays artists at an average royalty rate of $0.003 per stream.

In the US, a Living Wage for Musicians Act has been put to US Congress with the aim of ensuring that artists are compensated at a minimum rate of a penny per stream. At MusicTech, we’ve created a new guide listing the best streaming platform alternatives to Spotify.