As we crest the fabled Hump Day of what we’re pretty sure is Week 9,482 of the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, it’s natural for some of our normal distraction mechanisms to begin wearing down. (After all, there’s only so much time you can spend trying to teach your dog how to play chess before he inevitably beats you, which can really take the shine off the whole endeavor.) Luckily, at least some of our various streaming and entertainment institutions are stepping up to help fill in the gaps. Like music service TIDAL—typically among the priciest of the audio streaming companies—which is now offering up to four months worth of subscriptions for only a buck a pop.
TIDAL stands out from the streaming pack in a couple of ways—although, logistically, the most obvious one for most consumers is that it doesn’t offer any kind of free subscription option. The artist-owned company instead lures subscribers in with lots of juicy exclusives, including all the most recent JAY-Z and Beyoncé albums, plus stuff as recent as the Jay Electronica album that came out last week. Given that there’s a decent chance you blew through your free trial for the service a couple of surprise releases ago, the $1 a month plan is a decent way to check through the service’s library for some new tunes to play the next time you and Fido are setting up the board.