Tidal takes on Spotify with incredible 5 months for $5 / £5 subscription deal

(Image credit: TechRadar)

Move aside Spotify – Tidal's latest subscription deal means it could nab the streaming platform's top spot as the world's best value music service – for a limited time, anyway. 

Until January 15, Tidal is giving away a five month trial of its service to new customers for just $5 / £5 – and that applies to any of its subscriptions plans. 

Normally, Tidal Premium will set you back $9.99 / £9.99 per month, while its lossless high fidelity plan, Tidal HiFi costs $19.99 / £19.99 – so, if you go for the most expensive tier in your trial (and why wouldn't you, if you're a music fan?), you're saving a massive $95 / £95!

The best Tidal deal we've seen

US customers: 5 months of any Tidal streaming plan, now $5

US customers: <a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=103504&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fnowplaying%5D%5D" data-link-merchant="awin1.com"">5 months of any Tidal streaming plan, now $5
To take advantage of this incredible deal, you need to be a new customer. If paying $1 a month for lossless music streaming appeals, don't delay; this deal runs out on January 15. 

UK customers: 5 months of any Tidal streaming plan, now £5

UK customers: <a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=103504&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fnowplaying%5D%5D" data-link-merchant="awin1.com"">5 months of any Tidal streaming plan, now £5
As in the US, this deal only applies to new customers and will expire on 15 January. You can use it on any of Tidal's subscription plans, but we'd recommend opting for Tidal Hi-Fi to save the most money.

Tidal is a superb music streaming service, ideal for anyone with a penchant for hi-fidelity audio – that's why we awarded it 4.5 out of 5 stars in our Tidal review.

The biggest benefit of using Tidal over Spotify is its support for Hi-Res Audio codecs, streaming your music in the form of 16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC files with a bitrate of 1411kbps – or in other words, CD-like quality.

Why is that good? Well, services like Spotify offer MP3 files instead; when you compress a music track into an MP3, you have to shave off a lot of detail in order to achieve that miniature file size. 

That means you can lose a lot of the finer detail in the audio track, so for true audiophiles, platforms like Tidal, as well as Deezer, Quobuz, and most recently Amazon Music HD, offer the convenience of streaming without the loss of quality.

Usually these services come at a premium, which is why this deal is such good value for money, undercutting even the cheapest Spotify subscription – although you can, of course, use Spotify for free if you don't mind ads and not being able to skip tracks.

Olivia Tambini

Olivia was previously TechRadar's Senior Editor - Home Entertainment, covering everything from headphones to TVs. Based in London, she's a popular music graduate who worked in the music industry before finding her calling in journalism. She's previously been interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live on the subject of multi-room audio, chaired panel discussions on diversity in music festival lineups, and her bylines include T3, Stereoboard, What to Watch, Top Ten Reviews, Creative Bloq, and Croco Magazine. Olivia now has a career in PR.