Tidal announces price increase and introduces FLAC audio codec for high-res streaming

Music streaming platform TIDAL has recently announced two major updates. Firstly, Tidal will be increasing the price of its basic subscription plan. Starting from August 1st, the individual membership will cost $11 per month in the US, which is a $1 increase. The family plan will now be priced at $17 per month, a $2 increase. It appears that prices will also rise in other markets. However, the Tidal HiFi Plus tier will not be affected by this price raise.

Secondly, Tidal has introduced a new high-resolution audio codec: FLAC. Previously, Tidal's format of choice was MQA, a lossy but efficient high-res audio format. However, the platform has now embraced FLAC, an open-source format capable of compressing high-resolution audio at resolutions up to 24-bit/192kHz, just like MQA. The main difference is that FLAC files are lossless, meaning they do not sacrifice audio quality. However, FLAC files are larger in size compared to equivalent MQA files.

These updates provide Tidal users with more options for high-resolution audio streaming, and Tidal has announced that six million tracks in the high-res FLAC format will be available.