In a serious shakeup of its music streaming plans, Sq.-owned Tidal has dropped its priciest subscription tier and folded its perks, together with high-resolution and spatial audio tracks, into its extra inexpensive “HiFi” plan.
With the transfer, Tidal’s new $10.99/£10.99 subscription providing – now referred to as merely “Tidal” – basically matches these of Amazon Music Limitless and Apple Music.
In a help web page on its web site, Tidal stated its plan modifications would happen “globally” on 10 April. The UK website doesn’t verify the £10.99 monthly pricing, however many websites are reporting that determine, and Tidal’s pricing is often the identical numbers within the States as they’re within the UK.
Tidal’s new plan successfully combines its earlier HiFi and HiFi Plus plans, whereas preserving the cheaper HiFi pricing.
Tidal’s outdated $10.99/£10.99 monthly HiFi plan served up music tracks that have been lossless however solely CD-quality (16-bit/44.1kHz).
For top-resolution tracks as much as 24-bit/192kHz in addition to Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Actuality Audio codecs, you needed to pay $19.99/£19.99 a month for Tidal HiFi Plus.
However as soon as Tidal combines its HiFi and HiFi Plus plans, particular person Tidal members will get high-resolution (or “HiRes FLAC,” as a Tidal help web page says) tracks and spatial audio streaming for simply $10.99/£10.99 a month.
In the meantime, the brand new Tidal plan will value $16.99/£16.99 a month for households (together with as much as 5 relations) and $4.99/£4.99 a month for college kids. Once more, these costs are unchanged in comparison with the previous Tidal HiFi plan.
In asserting its new subscription plan, Tidal made no point out of MQA, the proprietary codec that was Tidal’s go-to format for high-resolution music.
Tidal introduced final yr that the lossless, open-source FLAC codec would grow to be the service’s “most well-liked format for high-resolution audio,” though MQA tracks would proceed to be accessible.
The Tidal announcement additionally lacked point out of Sony 360 Actuality Audio as a spatial audio format, though Dolby Atmos was talked about.
Foundry-owned website TechHive has reached out to Tidal for extra particulars.
Tidal was a pioneer when it got here to providing lossless and high-resolution audio tracks, and again within the day, audiophiles have been keen to pay Tidal’s premium costs as a result of the opposite main streaming companies (together with Apple Music, Amazon, and Spotify) solely provided lossy audio.
However Apple modified the sport in 2021 when it started providing high-resolution and spatial audio music tracks with its common plans at no further value. Amazon instantly adopted go well with. (Spotify introduced again in 2021 that it might start streaming lossless tracks however has but to observe up on the promise.)
A number of months after Apple’s transfer, Tidal responded by including a less expensive “HiFi” lossless audio plan for a similar value as Apple and Amazon, however as defined above, Tidal HiFi solely provided CD-quality tracks. For a similar high-resolution and spatial audio tracks accessible on Apple Music and Amazon Music Limitless, you needed to pony up for the $19.99/£19.99 a month Hello-Fi Plus plan.
Final summer season, Tidal hiked the costs of its Tidal HiFi plan to $10.99/£10.99 a month, matching the 2023 value hikes of Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify.
Up to date shortly after publication to notice that neither MQA nor Sony 360 Actuality Audio have been talked about in Tidal’s announcement.
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