Plex’s integration with TIDAL allowed you to listen to the streaming service’s entire music catalog right in your Plex app, alongside any music you might own in your self-hosted library. Unfortunately, that will soon stop working.
Plex announced today that TIDAL integration will be turned off, starting on October 28, 2024. TIDAL subscriptions billed through Plex won’t be renewed starting on September 26, 2024, and if you have one of those subscriptions, TIDAL will send you an email with instructions for setting up a new direct subscription that works with the TIDAL app. Plex has already stopped offering new TIDAL subscriptions.
The company said in a forum post, “So long as your TIDAL subscription is active and the TIDAL account is linked to Plex, you can continue accessing TIDAL functionality in Plex until October 28, 2024. On that date, TIDAL functionality in Plex will be turned off, after which you will no longer be able to use TIDAL functionality in Plex.”
Plex added integration with TIDAL in 2018, allowing people to link a TIDAL account or subscribe to the service in a bundle along with Plex Pass. You could then search, play, and organize music from TIDAL within the Plex site and apps, and combine music from TIDAL with your own self-hosted music library in playlists. Music playback from TIDAL was supported in most Plex apps, including desktop platforms, iPhone, iPad, Android, Xbox One, Roku, and other devices. It also worked in the dedicated Plexamp music player app.
There was no stated reason for the TIDAL integration going away. It’s possible TIDAL wants more people to have direct subscriptions, or the company wants more people to use the features not available through the Plex integration. The integration also might not have been worth the technical and billing overhead for both companies, especially if overall usage was low—there were occasional reports about TIDAL’s DRM causing playback issues on some devices.
Source: Plex Forums, Plex Support
