Wish your mobile service came with free music? At least one mobile provider is trying that, as Mate and Tidal team up.
Music and mobile phones go together like pepperoni and pizza — they just work — but that doesn’t mean we’re all paying for a service. In fact, with music services being an optional extra in your life, it’s possible you’re sticking with an ad-supported service to get by in your life, such as Spotify or YouTube Music’s free tier, letting you listen to music, but with ads.
Those are totally fine, but for folks who wish a mobile service would just come with the music service, that’s actually becoming a bit of a possibility.
One of the mobile virtual network operators using the Telstra 4G network, Mate, has this week chimed in to announce that customers on either its “Best Mates” 34GB plan or the “Soul Mates” 40GB plans will get a Tidal account free, and not just for a few months, but rather for the life of the Tidal account. Essentially, Mate is picking up the bill, though it won’t be for Tidal HiFi, but rather for Tidal Premium.
Much like the Spotify Premium account, that’s a 16-bit version of Tidal without the HiFi “Masters”, which means customers will get free music while they’re on Mate, but not in high-res, something that is an optional extra again.
Mate did tell Pickr that while the Tidal account is free for the life of the mobile plan, the data is not, and it won’t be unmetered while you use it. That’s distinct from Telstra’s approach to not counting the data for Apple Music plans, though Telstra doesn’t bundle in the plans free for its users. Meanwhile, Optus has previously bundled in Apple Music with select plans, but not unmetered the data used for the service.
“At Mate, we partner with brands that like to do things differently,” said Mark Fazio, General Manager at Mate.
“We love that Tidal strives to create a more sustainable music industry and teaming up with them felt like a no brainer to us,” he said. “We’re passionate about connecting Aussies to amazing music and thrilled that we can offer it to new and existing Mate customers on our great range of eligible mobile plans.”
Mate’s Tidal deal goes into effect now for both new and existing customers, meaning if you already subscribe to Mate, you’ll probably get an email shortly, though you’ll need to bring your own headphones, or possibly check out something new in that category.
