Tidal introduces two new HiFi tiers

Tidal

Tidal revamps its subscription plans and introduces a new way for artists to earn more on its service. In the US, there's also a free, ad-sponsored tier. But for other markets, the standard Tidal HiFi plan gets lossless and high-resolution. It costs $9.99 a month and brings improved music quality (up to 1411kbps), offline capabilities, and access to Tidal Connect and My Activity features.

As The Verge pointed out, Tidal had to match services like Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited that brings lossless to their services without extra charge.The Square-owned company also introduces a new Tidal HiFi Plus option that's $19.99 per month and houses its most premium audio content. It has access to "best-in-class immersive sound formats" like Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Audio Recordings. Tidal's Master Quality Authenticated will also be exclusive to this tier. 

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Square buys majority stake in Tidal to create artist-driven business

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It might seem like an unusual deal, but fintech company Square wants to invest in the future of streaming service Tidal. Square bought a majority stake in Tidal that's equivalent to US$297 million in cash and stock. It cuts out third-party investors and only keeps artists invested in the company to hold the rest of Tidal's shares. 

Tidal's former majority owner and renowned rapper Jay-Z will also join Square's board of directors to help oversee Square's businesses, including Seller and Cash app. Square's head of hardware, Jesse Dorogusker, will become Tidal's interim leader.

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Tidal comes to Amazon Echo

If you’re using Tidal and own an Amazon Echo device, you’re going to love this new update. The Jay-Z-owned music streaming service is now available on Amazon Echo devices. You can access it via an Alexa skill, and, of course, you need a Tidal subscription for it to work. Tidal comes to the service using Amazon’s recently introduced Music Skill API, the company was able to build support for Alexa without needing to rely on Amazon’s help (which other streaming services had to do). Now, you can set it as your default Echo streaming service. However, of course, you’ll lose the optional hi-fi audio quality Tidal is known for because of the hardware limitations of the Amazon Echo. But who knows if a hi-fi version of the speaker comes out in the future? For now, Tidal is hoping you’ll love its curated playlists and this integration for you to stick with the service.

Source: The Verge

Beyoncé takes digs at Spotify in new song off her Tidal-exclusive album with husband Jay-Z

Beyoncé has just released a new joint album with her husband Jay-Z on his own streaming service Tidal (where the pop superstar is also a shareholder) and one of the songs find her taking a dig at competitor Spotify. Beyoncé doesn’t hold back in “Nice” as she sings "Patiently waiting for my demise / 'cause my success can't be quantified / If I gave two fucks about streaming numbers / would have put Lemonade up on Spotify." Bey’s 2016 album Lemonade was released exclusively on Tidal.

Called Everything Is Love, the album features nine tracks with each credited to the couple a.k.a. The Carters and comes in at under 40 minutes. Using their clout as one of the biggest power couples in the music industry, the album is definitely seen as a way to help turn Tidal’s fortunes. The streaming service has had its fair share of controversies recently—including allegations of late royalties and inflated streaming numbers. Whether this would help retain users is a different question. It could spike trial sign-ups and one-month subscriptions, but will people keep coming back to the service? We can’t say. We don’t have access to Tidal’s exact subscriber base but it’s believed to be far smaller than Spotify’s 75 million paid users (as of March) or Apple Music’s 50 million (as of May, with this number including trials).

Source: Engadget