TIDAL made a surprising announcement earlier this week, stating that they are embracing Nostr and going all in on adopting the protocol.

We’re happy to announce that as of today TIDAL Embed Player supports logging in with Nostr – and if you’ve connected your account in the profile settings – you will be granted 🎉 full length playback 🎉. This gives an even richer experience on the web for you, especially on the previously mentioned social applications running on Nostr.

Sharing a TIDAL link in a post will now show the Embed Player and you – and other TIDAL subscribers – will have the ability to listen to the full track right in the post!

For now, it’s a relatively simple integration, but may indicate more to come. Last week, NostrPlebs developer Derek Ross made a public statement about how TIDAL and CashApp are both planning to embrace Nostr.

Creative Block

While this sounds like a huge bombshell, it makes sense in context: both TIDAL and CashApp have dedicated Nostr accounts, and are child companies of Jack Dorsey’s company, Block. Given Dorsey’s recent departure from the Bluesky board and his founding of OpenSats, a strategic alignment sounds viable. This was found in the Block Q1 2024 Shareholder Newsletter:

The internet will have a native currency; it’s just a matter of time. Artificial Intelligence systems and agents will have to transact, and the most efficient way to do so will be a common protocol for money movement.

Creative endeavors will rely heavily on micropayments, something that’s been discussed since the dawn of the internet, and finally being realized at scale with things like “zaps” (transferring small amounts of bitcoin via lightning) on the NOSTR protocol.

Commerce will be less constrained by national borders, flowing freely around the world without gatekeepers or rent seekers.

Right now, Block has five companies under its banner: Square, CashApp, TIDAL, Spiral, and TBD. Out of the five, only Square and TIDAL were unrelated to any kind of Bitcoin features. This is pure speculation, but it could be that all five of these companies could eventually embrace the Bitcoin Lightning network and Nostr to further the vision described in the Shareholder Newsletter.

TIDAL’s Nostr Integration

Back to TIDAL. The feature is really limited for now, and only allows users to log in through the embed widget, and share it in a player on Nostr statuses. The setup process felt kind of convoluted, and I had to jump through several hurdles to get it to work.

Initial Setup

First, you’ll need to log in to your TIDAL account, click Edit Information, and enter your Nostr Public Key. Doing this ensures that TIDAL’s server associates the key with your account.

Next, you’ll need to make sure that you have a Nostr Wallet extension installed in your browser. For sake of convenience, I went with Alby, because it’s relatively easy to use. You’ll have to make sure both the website and the extension have the correct Nostr Key in it, though, otherwise you’ll end up logging in with a blank account.

The First Test

For testing purposes, I’ve embedded a sample of Ween’s “Ocean Man” below. If you have everything set up correctly, you’ll see a prompt the very first time you load this page.

If you didn’t see it, or it didn’t work, this is what’s supposed to happen:

The usability leaves something to be desired. Provided you did everything correctly, though, your browser extension of choice will present a permissions dialog when you click “Login”. Afterwards, you’ll be able to play the embed.

Very Interesting, Very Weird

What’s absolutely bizarre here is that the Nostr prompt only appears if you have the browser plugin installed with a Nostr key. If you don’t, it just works like a normal media embed. Granted, this is a small demo of what’s to come, but what’s the point? Update: the embed transforms from a demo into a full track for paid users who have linked Nostr.

What’s worse, I wasn’t able to get the oEmbed player to load in a Nostr post. It just shows up as a regular link. Then again, it could be that this may only work for users with paid subscriptions.

Update: TIDAL developer Stefan Moro posted this update, offering to assist client developers with potential compatibility issues.

Regardless, It’s obvious that these features need more time for polish, and what’s being shown today is simply a small demo. My hope is that the developers continue to iterate on this, as the company extends to more features and a deeper integration. Embracing Nostr could be a really big deal, but TIDAL needs to make sure the experience is seamless and easy for people to even try it.