If you were following Jay Z, Beyoncé, or Nicki Minaj on Twitter at the beginning of April, you probably saw that each artist changed his or her profile pictures to all cyan. This symbolic gesture was to show solidarity for the new, artist-owned music-streaming service Tidal. However, is Tidal any better than the music-streaming services that already exist?

Tidal is a music-streaming service where users pay a monthly subscription for access to a large pool of music and music-related content. On March 30, 2015 16 high-profile musical artists including popular artists like Jay Z, Beyoncé, Madonna, Kanye West, and Daft Punk, who all co-own the music service, signed a declaration, the contents of which are a little sketchy. The 16 artists are “taking back their careers from tech companies.” Other streaming services, including Spotify, have upset major artists because of the fact that many artists have claimed that they don’t get as much money from having their songs streamed than they would just selling their music. Some artists, like Taylor Swift, have pulled their music from other streaming services like Spotify and have moved to Tidal.

Because of the free options provided by platforms like Spotify and Pandora, listeners are allowed to listen to music for free with the occasional interruption by an advertisement. The problem is that artists are paid next to nothing for someone listening to a song once. According to a post by Desmond Child, a song writer for artists like Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Katy Perry, Kiss, and more had only received 110 dollars for the Bon Jovi song “Livin’ On A Prayer” to split between the artist and publishers in the first quarter of 2012. That was for 6.5 million plays on Pandora.

So why is Tidal any better? Supposedly, the 16 artists all have a share in the company and split some of the profits, according to an article by The New Yorker. The service claims to “respect artists” but does not appear to change the playing field. Besides the absence of a free option to listen to music like Spotify, Tidal is basically Spotify, but with the option to pay an extra 10 dollars for better sound quality and a different pool of music to choose from. By using Tidal, you are basically paying for the same product that Spotify offers, just one that is owned by major musicians.

Tidal does not improve the problems that Spotify has, such as how much artists are paid for music streaming; it just gives more money to powerful musicians.