It’s a worrying thought, Tidal and Others pitch their regional prices based on some currency calculation. In the “rich” countries higher than the “poor” countries.
We see it as a great advantage, eg Hi Fi plus is costing me R 90 = 6 USD currently as a “pre deal” as Apple came on the market ,(it will go to R120 8 USD) but isn’t it a worry that the number of subscribers and hence profitability it becomes less attractive to maintain a service under such conditions. Witness the Turkey comment above.
We don’t have Qobuz in Africa at all , so if Tidal goes it’s Apple or nothing at the moment, not Apples fault BUT …
Not a nice situation wrt to Roon, to me Roon without Tidal will become progressively less attractive as Apple integration seems a forlorn hope.
Thanks James I tried to sign up via Plex before and the response was Family plans are not supported for now.
My son wants to use the Tidal app, so I will stick with what I have for now.
Our musical tastes do not mix well
plex supports family plans. but everybody has to have an own plex account (email) connect tidal to the account then invite them to your plex home (they also have the plex pass features in your plex home)
Sorry I was not clear, I meant the discount on Tidal family plan was not supported through Plex.
I already have Plex pass and PlexAmp and use Tidal with that, but subscribe directly with Tidal as I could not get the discount as I already had a Tidal family plan set up.
Doesn’t seem to make a difference to the Family Plan. My wife couldn’t care less about the MQA/Dolby stuff and would do well with the cheaper plan…I’m wondering if we should both split off from the highest-charging plan now…
Tidal lowered it’s price where I live when Deezer entered the market with a CD tier at 2/3 the price of the old Tidal hi-fi/masters tier. They price matched.
So now the new pricing for Tidal Hi-fi is even cheaper, and hi-fi plus is double. Deezer is in the middle for CD tier. Will be interesting to see if Deezer price matches.
If Deezer had integration with Roon, I’d probably go over to Deezer. But the Roon integration is a required feature for me.
But isn’t HiFi CD quality now, which is the big change at the lower end of the market.
I have downgraded from my next billing cycle to pay £14.99 for the family plan in CD quality, which seems reasonable to me (as opposed to £29.99)
Though I still buy most of my music, I might well upgrade back to plus when I see what the artists payments look like and that they are really not all going to the same 10 to 20 artist’s that Spotify seems to give all the money too.
When Tidal emailed me I immediately downgraded. I get to have Tidal then at £9.99 because of the library type and size, then Qobuz at £12.99 for high res stuff. This is great for me. When running both high res and finding the same albums and comparing and comparing I’ve always ended up preferring Qobuz for high res, it just sounds better to me.
Not for this to become an MQA argument, but I do wonder if Tidal have painted themselves into a corner really by using it. If they dumped it and streamed high res like Qobuz, I would probably dump Qobuz and go with Tidal. At the moment, £22.99 for both in the way I describe is best for me and I’m happy paying that total.
What happened to your saved MQA albums when you downgraded from the new Plus tier to the new HiFi tier?
I’ve been trying to get an answer from Tidal and getting conflicting feedback. On one response they say I will lose the reference in ‘My Albums’ to such albums, on another response they say I will get the 16 bit/14.1kHz versions (but then they are not clear if I have to find those albums or if it happens automatically).
I really don’t want to rebuild by hand ‘My Albums’ - let alone playlists etc.
It’s not just Tidal, but a good 80% of the companies that make Audio equipment have also committed to MQA. I have 3 or 4 device’s that decode MQA that I have purchased in the last 3 year’s and I never looked for any when purchasing.
I’m MQA agnostic so don’t want to add to any arguments, but this is just an observation.
I have just dropped my subscription to CD quality because that is good enough for me and it saves me £15;a month. Though I still have Masters until the 12th December, and I will see what changes then.
I know. It’s a perspective I already was completely familiar with as I have had dacs that fully support MQA and know fully of Roon’s capabilities itself around MQA. Still, the best high res sound I have had is via Qobuz. I determined that from initial listening between Qobuz and Tidal and even recent comparisons and revisits confirm exactly the same for me. Having access to Tidal’s larger library in CD quality for a tenner is a good supplement to a Qobuz subscription for me. (If Qobuz had Tidal’s library I would not use Tidal at all and I doubt many hifi people would).
Not from your local library?
I have bought a fair amount of 24/96 (and even a single 24/192) albums in the last few years, and I’m not sure if it is selection bias but they sound consistently amazing, even though many of them are from the 60s and 70s.
Not to be controversial, but I have listened to some 24/192 MQA on Tidal (Bowie’s Station to Station is one example) that sounds really amazing, but I have not listened to the Qobuz version to compare to).
But agree that with the reduced cost for higher quality audio everyone can be a winner, with caveats.
I might even go back to the Plus plan when I see how the artists are gaining more from this, as I buy mainly from Bandcamp to directly support artists directly.
I am now using Roon sans Tidal and it really is a crippled experience. I wonder if there could be a way to get Tidal service bundled with Roon in future.
Currently I have to use Apple music for discovery (i.e. new music) and Roon for my archive (i.e. old music).
I don’t use much in the way of local, probably about a dozen cds ripped to flac that aren’t available for streaming. I haven’t bought much in high res to download apart from 1 album for testing purposes and a few others a friend has. Personally I won’t invest in that kind of thing because it isn’t investing in anything at all as far as I see it, and this stuff is streamable or going to be streamable anyway.
The opposite logic is that many people already know what they want to listen to. A friend has just been obsessive over ripping CDs to flac and got everything he wants. It sort of makes sense if you are in the camp that no good music is made nowadays and you’ll only really want to listen to music you already like. As far as guitar bands goes, that this friend likes, most music nowadays is crap, and the few artists that have been around a long time are well past their prime and knocking out filler to cash in anyway.
On supporting artists, I would voluntarily pay an £2 / month on top of these cheaper tiers I am using to have that money go in the right direction.
I’d actually pay an extra £5 / month for 5 years if it would stop Coldplay releasing any more material.
(Try grabbing a free trial of Qobuz and dropping it into your Roon account, you can just go Versions on anything you have already added to your library and compare, if it is available on Qobuz. You probably already know this though. I find it better, subtle difference but enough to make it preferable).
I dont know the answer, but maybe look into Soundiz and Roon exports, make a back up of your albums outside of Roon and Tidal so at least you have some comfort. I have not tried this but will do so soon and probably downgrade Tidal.
I have not lost any albums that where in my collection. I had the full sub up until November last year, canceled and just renewed my old account on the hifi tier . All albums are still in Roon, the new tier doesnt stop you from seeing them you can still choose any MQA album in Roon as you always could it just want play the mqa stream of it if it’s a higher ORFS this. 44.1/24.
