I currently have the full tidal hifi plus subscription shared with 4 family members at a cost of £30 a month. Hence financially at least, if this becomes £16.99 + £9 then my costs just went down not up.
However, the email suggests that the DJ app integration will only be available to “individual plan subscribers”. It is not clear exactly what is meant by this i.e. does it mean I won’t be able create 4 normal (non-DJ) profiles for my family on this account any more? If yes and if they stay with tidal I’m going to end up with 2 separate tidal accounts at £16.99 each plus the £9 dj add on.
Also what will happen to existing playlists in tidal - these cannot easily be copied between accounts unless I briefly make them public right?
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I’d suggest that people contact Tidal with any concerns about limitations of the extension, BEFORE they make the changes. The extension should really be applicable to any plan, otherwise why not just have a separate DJ plan?
Tidal are not the best at wording things clearly, but the return of stems indicates that they do listen to their customers, so the more people asking about plan options, the better.
That remains to be seen. For all we (don’t) know they could have initiated the whole thing in the first place.
Also, if this is indeed all coming from the labels, then it’s them listening and I’d expect copyright issues to be taken care of too. Not just stems or offline functionality. Why call it a DJ tier if you’re still not allowed to DJ in public?
In that case it’s obvious they’re using hobbyist bedroom DJs as cash cow.
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It is not absolutely necessary to make the playlists public in order to transfer them. If you use a service such as tunemymusic.com, this will still work, even if your old account has been closed but not yet deleted.
The chain of events as I understand it:
- Tidal remove stems at the request of “major rights holders”.
- People leave/complain.
- Tidal issues statement saying they’ve heard the complaints and are working to bring it back.
- Tidal release customer survey asking about stems etc.
- Tidal announce new DJ extension and the return of stems.
Points 3 and 4 might be swapped or simultaneous.
I think most people would consider that as Tidal listening.
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Yes I’ve just put these questions to tidal support and will share feedback here when I get it
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That is an important point. However, the “Tidal for DJs” feature has also been advertised quite aggressively in the past.
Have any of you ever heard of anyone getting into legal trouble because of this? Ultimately, every CD and every online purchase of a track also states that public performance is not permitted.
Yep totally agree: if Taylor Swift and Co are kicking up a stink then an extra £9 isn’t going to change their stance, particularly when same artists and labels are on Beatsource, SoundCloud and Beatport. End of the day these things are often down to money and increasing revenues. The DJ extension may have different licensing agreement and therefore allows djs to use for commercial purposes. Beatsource and Beatport may already have this in place.
Nope. But the thing is, if you’re trying to sell something at a ‘pro’ price that’s not allowed to be used that way I’d call it a scam.
The re-introduction of stems alone will not be enough to justify the new pricing.
If we get a download cache that we can use it’s getting closer and I may consider it but if not I’ll just switch to apple.
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“* Hi Howard,
Thank you for contacting TIDAL Support.
We still offer a Family Plan. On April 10, 2024, TIDAL HiFi Plus Family and HiFi Family will be combined into one subscription tier called TIDAL Family at $16.99 USD/month.
Note that if the main account owner wants to access DJ integrations, they will have to subscribe to a TIDAL Individual plan + DJ Extension. Their family members will then need to select a new TIDAL Individual plan or join a different Family plan, as the DJ Extension is not available with Family plans.
Thank you,
Jose
TIDAL Support
*”
Hence the big impact here is on anyone currently combining a family hifi plus plan with djay integration. If the rest of the family want to continue using Tidal then I need (1) an individual account for myself + (2) the djay integrations add-on + (3) a separate account with a family plan. That will come to almost £50 a month.
As it happens, the rest of the family don’t seem particularly wedded to Tidal and have indicated that Apple Music family (same cost as the new Tidal prices) would suit them fine. Assuming there is no equivalent additional djay app integration fee in Apple Music (???) then I can either (1) keep everything with tidal at an approximate cost of £45 a month or (2) keep myself and djay on tidal but move the family to Apple Music at a cost of £45 a month or move everything to Apple Music at a cost of £16.99 a month. Looking like a no-brainer.??!?!!?!!
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Yes Steve - Tidal confirmed today you will need a new individual account plan to add the djay extra bundle - it cannot be added to a family plan. I’m considering moving everything to Apple Music as a result. It’s only the stems support and the aggravation of migrating playlists stopping me right now.
You won’t have stems or offline locker with Apple Music, though…
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I just found this.
New total monthly cost if you need to retain family Tidal access is 37 USD/GBP
Individual plan @ 11
Djay extension @ 9
Additional family plan 17
In UK current family plan is 30 GBP
So 7 GBP increase for me if I stay with tidal.
Most sensible thing seems to be to move the family plan only to Apple Music and run with both for a while at least then I have best of both worlds - I can move playlists across to Apple and try it out with Djay. If I prefer Tidal still I’ve then got Apple Music as a backup for djay in the event of any service availability issues colliding with a paid gig……
Is there confirmation that offline content from Tidal in Djay is coming? I’d assumed that was never happening. Game changer if it does though yes. Regarding stems, it’s annoying not having it but it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me as I’m not 100% EDM based. Stems support alone is not worth £20 a month to me -the offline content as well would be though as that takes a huge amount of risk out where paid gigs are concerned and actually opens up more venues for me too - there are some locally to me buried so deep there is zero 4/5G signal and the venue WiFi isn’t reliable and dies mid session.
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With you 100% offline playback over stems
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I am pretty sure offline support for Tidal will come to Djay.
It has been available for several months on Virtual DJ. So all the legal/technical aspects from Tidal’s side are in place. Virtual DJ is always fast to integrate with partners, so no surprise that they are first.
So, IMO, it is only a matter of time before the other DJ app vendors follow.
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And edit/add tidal directly in Djay pro?
You mean adding/removing track from Tidal playlists? That too is technically possible. The Tidal API supports it, and VDj (and maybe others), can do it already. So I can’t see why Algoriddim would not want to support it as well.
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