Which one do you prefer?
I am seeing plenty of mixed opinions about both Spotify and Tidal. Some are saying Spotify is the best, others say it’s bloated, others think it’s annoying it’s also an app for podcasts. Some people really like Tidal, but I have mostly seen negative opinions about it - worse song recommendations, no difference in audio, too expensive.
As someone who doesn’t care very much for song recommendations I can’t decide which one is ideal for me personally. Tidal seems to pay artists better, but the criticism it receives makes me unsure. What do y’all think?
Does tidal serve podcasts?
It does not.
I’M SOLD!
Zero dot zero zero three
Give me two years, and your dinner will be free
Exactly the 2 reasons I switched from Spotify to Tidal. The only complaint I have from Tidal is that sometimes the offline playlists take 15-20s to start playing. But it could also be my phone or for having the offline stuff on the SD card
I can’t speak much about the money making stuff, but I’ve read that most music artists make the majority of their income through touring and ticket sales for their live performances at venues, music festivals as well as attending other private events etc - and this goes back to even pre-Spotify days. So Spotify not paying artists well doesn’t really make a big difference. In fact, I’d argue that Spotify actually brings artists publicity, much like how mp3 sharing did back in the day, or the radio for that matter. I’ve discovered many artists via radio back in the day, much like how I discover them today via Spotify’s recommendations, and personally, I don’t see the issue.
Anyways, as a former audiophile, I’ve decided to choose convenience over perceived audio quality, so I use Spotify. Mind you, it’s not like I don’t perceive any difference at all, but the point is, for my day-to-day listening, it makes little difference - especially when most of my listening is in generally noisy environments like at work or during my commute. Also, Spotify streams at 320kbps Ogg Vorbis (on a good connection) - you’d need to have really good ears and gear to actually hear a difference between that and an uncompressed stream. Even then, it’s not like it makes a difference if you’re say just listening to pop and rock music or something.
It’s not like I’ve completely given up on lossless audio - I do use my audiophile gear when I’m in the mood and want to listen to certain tracks like say some of Pink Floyd atmospheric stuff like in A Momentary Lapse of Reason, or say John Williams, or classical music like Tchaikovsky or Vivaldi, but these are just a small fraction of my listening experience.
So if you are blessed with the ears and gear to actually make out the difference between 320kbps ogg vs FLAC/DSD, AND you listen to the kind of music where it really matters AND you care enough about that difference that it affects your enjoyment - then sure, go for Tidal. Otherwise, there’s no point.
After a few years on Spotify, I switched to Tidal.
Issues I had with Spotify are:
- You can’t block a song, an artist or a band. Ridiculous really. For example, I dislike Kanye West and never want to hear his music, and blocking him on Tidal was easy.
- The Spotify shuffle algorithm is beyond terrible. If you have a 250 song playlist, you’ll hear the same popular 50 songs and never the obscure ones. Sometimes even back-to-back. It’s frustrating and they won’t fix it. It seems to be their algorithm is designed to promote some artists or bands more than others.
- Spotify have promised higher quality audio for years and still haven’t brought it out. With good headphones or speakers I can hear the difference that Tidal has.
I miss how well Spotify integrated with Google Home though.
- You tap or click on don’t play this on either the the hamburger menu in the app or the right click menu on the computer.
- Shuffle doesn’t actually shuffle. It prioritizes songs based on listening habits, and licensing fees. They did a major update in 2022 to address the issues of it playing the same artist back to back, and I noticed a stark improvement, I actually can use shuffle now.
- The 320 kbps OGG, or AAC standards that Spotify supports are, outside of critical listening environments, indistinguishable from lossless audio. The only way you are going to hear a difference is with some very high end gear, and a very well trained ear. For reference Tidal themselves don’t stream with lossless audio. They stream with MQA, a very good, near lossless high quality compression algorithm, good enough to be called master quality authenticated, but still compressed, and the version Tidal uses is limited to the 16 bit version not the 24 bit version. Is Tidal Higher quality? Technically. Noticeable? Not without machines and measurement tools.
For reference I tune studios and PA systems for a living. I know how much peoples ears lie to them. Enjoy what you want to enjoy, because at the end of the day we listen to music for enjoyment. But the only technical win Tidal has is they pay artists more.
Maybe they’ve since added blocking artists. I know that I had several back and forth conversations with Spotify support on this and there wasn’t any way to do it back then. I don’t want to block a song, I want to block an artist/band completely.
I don’t want shuffle to take into account their licensing fees, or which record labels they have promotions with. I want a random mix based on my favorite songs or chosen playlist. This is unacceptable and part of why I cancelled Spotify.
Tidal doesn’t use mqa. The company behind mqa went under and they’ve since changed to FLAC.
Good headphones or great speakers and I do hear a difference. Not in every song, but in many. Spotify keeps promising better quality and they keep failing to deliver.
For reference, I have studio monitors that are calibrated and room corrected. Yes. There is a difference.
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Re number 2, is that true even if you disable Automix?
I have a 3000+ saved songs list which is my standard “just play some music, give me the kitchen sink” choice. The only way to get Spotify off of a “shuffle-loop” is to turn off shuffle, skip a few songs, then turn shuffle back on.
It will still inevitably go back to the same 50 songs after a while though. I haven’t found a way to prevent this with any setting. I’ve not noticed it on any of my playlists with only a few hundred songs, but I don’t listen to those as long or often as my saved songs.
On mobile you can at least pick a (Spotify generated) genre filter which helps.
I just want Spotify to shuffle like old school iTunes. All the songs on this list… but randomized. A setting like iTunes to favor songs you’ve listened to fewer times would also be neat.
But we’re in the era of algorithms for everything, and apparently even Spotify premium isn’t enough to save you from sponsored and/or targeted manipulation Or their algorithm is just bugged and they don’t care.
I’ve actually noticed this with their AI DJ too. Listen to it long enough, it basically favors the same handful of artists and songs over and over again.
There is one feature that is missing on all other music streaming apps that makes them useless to me: Spotify Connect
I remote desktop into another computer for work a lot, so I need a solution for listening to my music on my main computer, while controlling it from another device.
I tried Tidal 2 years ago and it was a solid experience, even had better coverage of artists available than spotify when i looked. Tools help with setting over your playlists and such.
The reason I haven’t gone over to Tidal, is that their shuffle is broken still to this day. If you have a playlist of let’s say 1000 songs, the app will only load the first 500 entries or so until you start scrolling down. Shuffle happens on your end, not on theirs, and since it doesn’t load the songs until you scroll down, shuffling will only take those first 500 into account. It’s absolutely ridiculous that this isn’t being fixed, it support knew about it 1 years ago and still nothing’s changed. That’s unacceptable for such basic behaviour imo.
I tried Tidal. The interface is decent enough. Audio quality is obviously better if you take advantage of hifi.
The reason I didn’t stick with it is that I do want the recommendations, and tidal was terrible there. So if you don’t care about that, go for it.
I tried Tidal cause I like the idea of paying artists more per stream. However I simply didn’t like the UI (especially the lack of album covers visible when list-viewing playlists) and recommendations.
Ended up switching to Apple Music which, even on Android, I prefer.
Has lossless, supports uploading your own files to the cloud, my fav Library system, and pays artists more per stream than Spotify. No podcasts too 👍 Windows app is also getting pretty good (still behind Spot tho)
Tidal for its seamless Plex integration.
I have Spotify, Tidal and YouTube Music. In my opinion Spotify’s apps and UI are way better. Also the recommendations are much better.
Desktop Tidal feels clunky and YT Music doesn’t have a desktop client at all.
All three mobile apps are just fine.
Many more people use Spotify so you’re probably more likely to find good playlist links for Spotify.
YouTube Music is included with YouTube Premium and Tidal has higher quality audio if you need that.
If you don’t care so much about the UI, recommendation engines etc, you can use any of them really. They have similar libraries and in the end they do the same thing - play music.
(YouTube Music has music.youtube.com which is basically a desktop client.)
Good to know, thanks!
YouTube Music doesn’t have an official desktop client, but there is an unofficial client which wraps the website and adds plugins. Really not bad.
Thanks!
I switched from Yt Music to Tidal because of audio quality and it’s audible. But the difference between Spotify highest quality and Tidal is truly minimal. I did the tests and I couldn’t hear it. I kinda prefer the UI and generally like supporting market alternatives if they’re good and if they pay artists better, then that’s even better. I don’t listen to podcasts either, so those are my personal reasons for choosing Tidal over Spotify.
I have never really used Spotify, but my partner insists that the recommendations on Tidal are actually better. I also think the recommendations are great, but work best for genres that Tidal is strong at. Of the genres I listen to, I’ve had really good experiences with the genres hip hop, rap, lofi, misc. electronic music, western pop, and less good experiences with classical music, soundtracks and more niche genres like J-Pop, African Pop and random trash (on Spotify, our we used to like to prank our friends by adding stuff like gangster’s paradise kids bop version or “female orgasm sounds” to their playlists. I haven’t really found prank-worthy stuff on Tidal yet).
So it’s really a personal decision and tbh, I think Spotify is the better choice for most people.
Switched to Tidal a couple of years ago. I like the app better and the bump in audio quality is nice with good headphones or on my hifi system. If you’re the kind of person who walk around with whatever the latest chinesium special bluetooth buds promoted by influencers are then it might not be for you.
They’ve pretty much copied all the good features on Spotify (like my mix) but left out all the useless bloat and “promotions”.
Couldn’t agree more with this. It was a well worth switch for me too. They had some moment of bullshiting with closed MQA audio format abut have now come to senses and are getting rid of this nonsense and switching to open FLAC for lossless audio also for highest quality.
Just a quick note: Tidal isn’t lossless. They said they were, but that was a lie and they removed that statement and said they never said they were when they were caught.
There is a lot more to it so if you have time, watch this video: https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc
That video is about the MQA stuff. They are switching to FLAC. Virtually all tracks I play are in FLAC format.
Yeah I didn’t knew that. The last time I checked was around a year ago and at this time they still used MQA
It’s new-ish for sure. Your original complaint against MQA is justified.
Wow, that’s some bs. What about Apple’s?
Apple Music is lossless
Also I was talking about MQA, but apparently they sold MQA and now they switched back to FLAC
I use Tidal. I have no issues with the app or anything it recommends to me. In fact, it does a really great job at mentioning new music from bands that I haven’t heard from in a while. Econoline Crush and Filter are 2 that had a recent release that even Apple Music didn’t tell me about, even though I have both bands music in my library with Apple.
I’ve tried to like Spotify, but I just couldn’t get into it. There was just a feeling that it’s not a music first app, but a user data collection app that happens to provide music. I don’t get that feeling with Tidal.
If I had to complain about Tidal for something, it would be the Live feature. I have the toggle off for showing live sessions, but I’d love to just turn it completely off and remove all traces of that feature. No one cares what I’m listening to, and I have no intention of being “social” in my music app.
Spotify pays Joe Rogan a huge salary. I won’t help support it.
iBroadcast. Upload music you have purchased, access it from everywhere. No ads. Not great for discovering new music but it’s an underrated service.
I use YouTube Music. For 18€/month, I get unlimited access to both YouTube Premium and YouTube Music for the whole family (5 accounts). The music selection is better than Spotify, as anything tagged as “music video” on YouTube you can play in YT Music. I can’t tell the difference in sound quality between Spotify and YT Music, but I use Bluetooth headphones anyway…
Spotify and YT music have the two lowest bitrates at 192kbps for YT and 328kbps for Spotify so they both sound like garbage. I’ve never listened to music less than when I was using YT music. Bad personalized playlists, awful sound quality, it would mix in music videos and shit. I’d rather the radio at that point
Tidal sounds vastly better (1441kbps lossless CD quality at the same price) but their personalized playlists are quite lacking.
However… I’ve found Apple Music to be the best one. Its audio quality is even higher than Tidal, supporting not only lossless, but also high-res lossless (between 4608 and 9616 kbps… far above above CD quality, great for studio speakers.) Its recommendations are almost as good as Spotify too.
I don’t own any Apple hardware btw, the app works great on Android. The Windows app is “in preview” but it’s pretty stable and both of them support lossless audio (just don’t use the website to listen, that’s not lossless)
Edit: spelling and formatting looked okay on my tiny phone
Edit 2: I forgot to mention that both Spotify (and especially YT Music try as hard as possible to not pay artists. Tidal was known for paying artists really well until a year or two ago when new ownership changed things. Apple Music still pays pretty well (for a streaming service)
Edit 3: Tidal also has high-res lossless but the “Max” tier is twice the price
Tidal doesn’t have lossless. Apple music and Deezer do.
Tidal dropped MQA a while ago they switched to hi-res FLAC. They sold MQA off to some Canadian company
Really. The last time I checked was about a year ago
Yea it was pretty recent, 2-3 months ago. I’m not sure if they’re done
migratingreplacing all of the MQA files though because even the Hi-Fi (below Master) would get a downsampled MQA instead of a FLAC. It should be HFLAC and FLAC now
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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I get what you’re saying and if quality matters to you, go for it. I listen on Bluetooth headphones while commuting, and I really can’t tell the difference… For me, the added benefit of YouTube Premium is better than the potential sound quality increase. It’s great that we have choices :)
Edit: YT Music has 256kbps AAC & OPUS
oh neat they upgraded, it used to be 192kbps which is abysmal, they should have updated to at least 320 but whatever
What is the bitrate for the “High” (Not HiFi/FLAC) quality version? I had heard it was 320, so the same as Spotify. Unfortunately when I tried Tidal a couple of weeks ago, most of the music I listen to only goes up to “High”.
Though not that I have top of the line headphones to make a difference anyways, I’m sure.
“High” is Lossless - 16-bit, 44.1 kHz (aka CD Quality). It used to be called “HiFi.”
“Low” has two options (for me at least): 96 or 320 kbps (AAC).
“Max” is HiRes and MQA.
HiRes is anything better than High, up to 24-bit / 192 kHz. Some (many?) HiRes songs are 24-bit / 44.1 kHz.
MQA is older and worse than HiRes and I don’t recall hearing good things about it.
Tidal’s entire library should be lossless unless you’re on the free ad tier. But the high quality should be 320? I don’t have a subscription anymore
I actually think that nowadays YouTube music is better than Spotify. It’s just that the sound quality kinda sucks.
I totally would’ve agreed 1-2 years ago though.
Spotify is inching toward adding the level of personalisation that Google Play Music used to have and YT Music is still playing catch-up. GPM used to have playlists for location and time of day (Wednesday afternoon at home, or Friday night at work, Tuesday morning on the road, etc). I’m still salty they killed it. Unfortunately they all sound like trash if unless you’re listening to Bluetooth. The lossless files make a tiny difference on old car Bluetooth but not much, it’s a tad cleaner when it’s only being compressed once as opposed to twice. On wired headphones though it’s a night-and-day difference
