Jay-Z's Tidal streaming music service revealed Tuesday that it has signed agreements with TuneCore and DistroKid in an attempt to make it easier for independent artists to get their music added to the Tidal catalog.  The two distribution firms join Record Union and Phonofile as partners in the Tidal Discovery initiative designed to allow indie acts to release music directly through Tidal and showcase them on the Tidal service.  Unsigned musicians can now sign a contract, select from a choice of royalty structures and upload their music directly to Tidal's library.

Initially launched in 2014 by Aspiro, a Sweden-based media technology firm that Jay Z purchased, along with more than dozen high-profile celebrities that have stakes.  The service relaunched in March, but has yet to take off due in part to a wave of bad press.  The going is only going to get tougher moving forward as Apple is slated to launch its music streaming product and Google just launched a free version of Google Play Music.