We explained last fall how $10.99 would become the new $9.99 for individual music streaming plans, and now Tidal is the latest streaming service to fall in line.
As Billboard reports, Tidal has been notifying subscribers on its HiFi tier that their $9.99 a month streaming price will go up to $10.99 a month starting on August 1. Meanwhile, the price for Tidal’s Family HiFi plan will go up from $14.99 a month to $16.99/month.
This news story is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best music streaming services.
Tidal’s HiFi tier serves up music tracks with lossless audio quality, while the pricier HiFi Plus plan includes high-resolution tracks with streaming quality all the way up to 24-bit/192kHz. Tidal also offers a free ad-supported tier.
The $19.99-a-month Tidal HiFi Plus plan doesn’t appear to be getting a price hike, at least not yet.
Tidal’s price hike follows those of Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited. Apple Music raised the price for individual music streaming plans from $9.99 a month to $10.99/month back in October 2022, while Amazon Music Unlimited individual plans got the same price hike in February, going up to the same $10.99-a-month level.
The one big music streamer that hasn’t raised its individual rates yet is Spotify, which still only charges $9.99 a month for its individual Premium plan.
That said, there’s been chatter that Spotify may soon debut a new, pricier subscription tier that could include its long-delayed Spotify HiFi feature, and it’s possible Spotify could take the opportunity to impose a price hike for individual Premium streaming plans, too.
While the big video streamers seem to be constantly raising their prices, music streamers have long been reluctant to hike their subscription rates.
Until recently, $9.99 a month for individual music streaming plans was pretty much the norm, and that price level held firm for roughly a decade.
But last fall, Apple finally broke off from the pack, raising its individual music streaming prices to $10.99 a month. Many industry observers predicted that Apple’s competitors would follow suit, and lo and behold, most did.
Tidal’s move to raise its HiFi streaming prices comes about a week after it announced that it had a new “preferred” audio codec for the high-resolution “Master Audio” tracks on its HiFi Plus tier.
​​Tidal CEO Jesse Dorogusker told users on Reddit that FLAC is now “our preferred format for high-resolution audio,” and not MQA, the proprietary high-resolution audio codec that Tidal previously favored.
Both FLAC and MQA tracks are now available for users in Tidal’s preview program.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he covers smart speakers, soundbars, and other smart and home-theater devices. You can follow Ben on Twitter.