An unnamed indie record label has shared its first royalty statement from Tidal.

Tidal has copped a lot of flack in recent weeks. Jay-Z’s streaming service dropped out of the top 750 on Apple’s App Store less than a month after re-launching, with a number of high-profile musicians criticising Tidal’s business model. Jay-Z resorted to personally calling up subscribers to thank them for joining the service, before taking to Twitter to defend his newest business acquisition. An unnamed independent record label has provided the best evidence yet in support of the Tidal: its first earnings report.

The newly leaked earnings report, posted on Digital Music News, reveals that Tidal’s average royalty payout is almost twice that of main rival Spotify. Spotify claims to pay an average of 0.72 cents ($0.0072) per stream to rights owners. Based on the numbers in the earnings report, Tidal’s average royalty payment s 1.2 cents ($0.012). This number comes from taking the average Label Share Net and dividing it by the average Unit Price.

The numbers reveal that Tidal keeps 30%, which is the industry standard figure that most streaming services adhere to. Jay-Z originally stated that the company would pay 75% to royalty owners, meaning they should only retain 25%. The discrepancy could possibly be attributed to the fact that this earnings report is from March, and Tidal didn’t complete its star-studded re-launch until the very end of March. The arrival of April’s earnings reports may provide a more accurate picture of Tidal’s royalty payout system. [via CoS]