Tidal, a music streaming platform, is restructuring its subscription plans in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage over its rivals. It is unifying its HiFi Plus and HiFi plans into a single, unified Tidal plan. This new plan provides all the features that were previously available in the Plus plan for $20 per month but at a reduced rate of $11, similar to Spotify and Apple Music’s individual plans. Given the similar features offered by its competitors, Tidal found it hard to sustain the additional $9 fee from its users, which led to a loss of a tenth of its workforce in December.
The new Tidal plan will provide users access to Dolby Atmos, HiRes FLAC, and lossless audio for over 100 million songs. While Apple Music does offer lossless audio, Tidal takes a lead by offering this before Spotify. However, existing HiFi Plus users should note that the DJ integration feature will be reformed as a DJ Extension, which will cost an added $10. Those who have used the DJ integration within the previous 90 days will have the DJ extension added automatically to their new plan, which will come into effect on April 10.
Tidal is streamlining its family plan as well into a single plan for $17 instead of the previous $30 for HiFi Plus. While these alterations generally benefit Tidal users, the platform is phasing out several options, including the free version of its service, as of March 4. In addition, Tidal has removed any discounts for new military and first responder subscriptions. From April 10, existing free tier subscribers will have to pay the full amount, while military staff and first responders already on Tidal will need to transition from June 10. Nonetheless, Tidal will maintain the $5 monthly rate for student users.
