Tidal, one of Spotify’s major competitors, is starting to offer a new subscription plan where you can listen to 80 million songs in its library for free. Moreover, this plan is completely ad-free.
The plan, called Tidal Free, will differ from the company’s HiFi and HiFi Plus tiers by offering a significantly lower bitrate for streaming audio. In addition, Tidal will inform users about Hi-Fi between song breaks. At least for now, the free plan will have no ads, just Tidal’s own notifications.
However, the free plan also lacks options such as lyrics or offline downloads.
Tidal also changes the amount of royalties it will pay to artists in this subscription plan. So the amount paid to the artists will differ depending on which subscription plan they use. For example, users with the free plan will be paid according to “the number of mass streams”. In Tidal Hi-Fi Plus, 10% of your monthly subscription fee is paid by the artist you listen to the most.
This strategic move by Tidal is expected to be a major threat to serious rivals such as Spotify or Apple Music. Tidal Free, which is only available in the USA for now, will be active in all countries in the coming weeks.
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