Holy shit, soulseek is still a thing??! TIL

Yep, they're regular FLAC files with tagged metadata.

You can use them as normal. Copy to another device, to an iPod, use them on a video editor, send to a friend.

This has been going on for ages, Tidal never patched it, so I think they quietly are okay with it because not many users do it anyway and at least you're paying for the service.

I think any links would violate Lemmy.world's policies.

But a quick search for "Tidal downloader github" will give you several options.

But the ides is that when Tidal streams to specific devices they basically upload an encrypted FLAC to an AWS host and the device downloads the file and uses your account as the key.

So people create apps that do all that, but instead of simply streaming the FLAC, they download and save it. They require a paid account, or an active free trial. I pay for the discounted student one, which still gives you access to the maximum audio quality.

The great part is you get album art, live lyrics, high resolution audio, an organized and properly tagged library with zero work. The output FLACs are regular files - no DRM or weirdness, I use them on a MP3 player.

Look up soulseek