Plex users can now stream Tidal music directly from the Plex app. Moreover, subscribers can save up to $60 a year on the price of both Tidal and Plex Pass subscriptions.
Tidal’s entire music catalog (including music videos and podcasts) is available on Plex. Better yet, it promises to integrate with your existing Plex music library. That allows Plex to suggest artists you might like with better accuracy or help fill in missing albums. It also means that playlists and the Plex Discovery and Artist Radio features can select tracks from both Tidal and your personal library.
After linking my Tidal account, I was able to test Tidal in the Plex iOS and web browser apps for a few hours this morning. It works, mostly, especially if you just want to access the raw Tidal library. The Universal Search feature lets me easily find artists, albums, and tracks anywhere I have music in Plex or Tidal. But some features like Discovery and Artist Radio don’t work, either because of a bug or because they’re not turned on yet. As such, Tidal on Plex feels very much like a beta service at the moment, which isn’t unusual for a day-one Plex launch. Fortunately, you can always cancel the 30-day free trial if things don’t improve, and the Tidal apps can still be used outside of Plex.
Tidal is the first streaming music service to be fully integrated into Plex — no plugins required. It’s a milestone moment for the company that’s steadily pushing into third-party media, joining the recent launches of Plex News, Plex Web Shows, and Plex Podcasts. Plex got its start as a fork of the XBMC project (see also: Kodi), a platform that was notorious for letting people manage libraries of ill-gotten video and audio downloads.
“The only solution that organizes and curates all major media types in one place”
“The addition of TIDAL’s music streaming service within Plex makes it the only solution that organizes and curates all major media types in one place,” said Plex CEO Keith Valory. “It’s another step closer to making all the media that matters to you accessible from one app, on any device, anytime.”
Plex & Tidal Premium bundles start at $9.99 per month ($8.99 for existing Plex Pass subscribers), while Plex & Tidal HiFi bundles start at $19.99 ($18.99 for existing Plex Pass subscribers). Normally, Plex Pass costs $3.33 per month when paying one year at a time, while Tidal costs $9.99 per month for a Premium subscription and $19.99 per month for Hi-Fi.