No More Tiers: TIDAL Reduces High-Res Music Streaming Prices

TIDAL will combine its HiFi Plus and HiFi tiers as of April 10. The benefits of the pricer HiFi Plus plan will now be available to those on the more affordable HiFi plans; the single tier will be simply dubbed TIDAL.

An individual TIDAL plan will cost $10.99 a month. HiFi Plus used to cost $19.99 a month.

“The introduction of a single TIDAL subscription tier means more fans across 61 markets globally can discover and enjoy music in HiRes FLAC and Dolby Atmos catalog in addition to over 110 [million] tracks in lossless quality for a best-in-class listening experience,” the company wrote on its website on Sunday (March 3).

The various streaming services have different approaches to high quality audio files. Apple Music has offered lossless audio and spatial audio as part of any individual plan for no extra cost since 2021. Amazon offers HD, Ultra HD, and Spatial Audio to those on its Amazon Music Unlimited plan (though not to users of Amazon Music Free or Amazon Music Prime). Spotify announced a plan to roll out Spotify HiFi — which “will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio” — in February 2021, but it hasn’t yet materialized.  

TIDAL has introduced a series of changes since it was bought by Block, the mobile payments company led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in March 2021. (At the time, Block was known as Square.) In June, TIDAL rolled out a new “Artist Home” portal, which global head of product Agustina Sacerdote described as “the first concrete milestone toward our vision of establishing a direct relationship with artists and building products and services for them.

Last year, the company also revamped its Rising program, which provides artists with education on the music business as well as funding. The program has expanded to touch over 100 artists and disbursed more than $800,000.