I previously has a paid TIDAL account which I let expire. After the announcement this week that they introduced free accounts I decided to see if I could use it with Roon. It successfully linked my account and I can browse all of their catalog but when I try and play a song it fails with “This track is not currently available from TIDAL”.
Do we know if this is expected to work or not? I expect since this is hot off the presses that even if Roon plans to support it they might need some time to implement changes needed for the new pricing tiers on TIDALs side?
No, the free tier of TIDAL is not expected to work with Roon. There are strong requirements on “free streaming” from the major music labels, and allowing them to run in third-party software generally isn’t an option that is allowed, as they don’t have a contract with us.
We have three big players in the music industry who dictate the rules to all other market participants, have reorganized themselves with the help of Spotify, are buying up large artist catalogs for hundreds of millions with their bulging war chests…
Not a good starting point to dynamically unleash market forces! The free sample belongs to successful marketing, like the butter on the bread slice of an artist, who should decide freely what happens with his art.
The market will only go into profitable diversity when concerned artists, distributors and software providers free themselves from this one-sided contractual bracket with intelligent ideas and niche providers like Roon independently have the possibility to guarantee free playback directly as well.
A dream for every artist who recognizes this chance and offers Roon to develop the buy button.