Big Price Increase For DJs Using Tidal, But Stems Coming Back

As part of an overhaul of its subscription levels, Tidal has announced a major price rise for DJs. The change means that if you want to DJ with the service, you will shortly be paying a whopping £9 more a month in the UK, €11 in Europe, and presumably $11 or $12 in the USA.

This comes into effect on 10 April and is fully rolled out by 13 May, so if you want to keep using Tidal, you’re simply going to be paying substantially more for it, starting in just a month or so from now.

We spoke to Tidal when the ability to use real-time stems in DJ software was removed from their service, and they told us that DJing is an important niche for them, and that they are looking for ways to make the experience for DJs better. But this… isn’t that.

UPDATE (6 March): We reached out to Tidal, and a Tidal spokesperson told us this: “I can confirm we’re bringing back stems as part of the new DJ extension along with some additional features built for the DJ community.”

Our Thoughts

Tidal is a good mainstream choice as a streaming platform for DJs, but the way this has been handled is a PR disaster for the brand. Removing access to real-time stems for DJs, then bringing it back but more or less doubling the fee for those who want to continue using the service in their DJ software, was never going to fall well with DJs.

We are not party to negotiations between Tidal and the record labels (who were implicitly blamed for the removal of stems in the first place), but to practically double your fees and offer no benefits to DJs when announcing it, only to belatedly announce that stems are coming back after all, really does have us scratching our heads here.

As for the additional features, it’s anyone’s guess. Offline caching? Tempo and musical key information in playlists? We will speak further to Tidal as soon as we can and if there’s more to add, we’ll bring it to you.