Meet Tidal’s New Owners

After rumors that Jay Z’s Tidal streaming service would boast exclusive music and content ahead of its competitors and offer fairer royalties to artists (not to mention the confirmed report that Taylor Swift agreed to include her catalog in Tidal’s library), Jay Z and a long list of famous friends and fellow musicians appeared at the service’s official launch yesterday (March 30) to reveal just why all of those artists turned their Twitter profiles blue: They were part-stakeholders in the rapper’s latest venture.

While concrete details answering some of those aforementioned rumors were quite plainly left out of owner Alicia Keys’ address, we now know at least one new thing about the platform that wasn’t even part of the rumor mill ahead of the announcement -- Tidal is an artist-owned endeavor. As such, all of Tidal’s owners appeared onstage alongside Jay Z and Keys, including Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Jack White and more. It was a powerful image of artists attempting to take back control of an industry that -- in recent years -- has been slipping away one free stream at a time.

Placing Jay Z to the side, the 16 other artists who own a part of Tidal each were offered a three-percent stake in the company. That total equity for the group comes in at 48-percent, just under a majority (via Billboard).

Learn more about Tidal’s newly revealed ownership in the gallery above, along with some of the exclusive content that they've already shared on the platform (we're guessing the list of exclusive goodies will only increase as the days pass).