Is tidal the best music streaming service?

[Golfdriver97]

Do you not see the $9.99 option?

Posted via the Android Central App

I did misunderstand the breakdown. I was under the impression that listening to music was only under the $20 option. The HiFi icon was what threw me off.

However, Tidal was missing some stuff that I would prefer to listen to, so not a service for me. However, like others have said before, whatever works for you, great.

 

[Anthony Hagan]

I have been a longtime Spotify user, ovee four years at this point. I love the app, and the music and selection is excellent. Are there acts I wish were on there? Yeah, mainly Prince, Peter Gabriel, Bob Seger, Garth Brooks...

That said, I have given Tidal two different chances. Once a year ago, and once last month. First try, I could not tell a difference on audio quality even streaming lossless. (I chalk that up to my LG G2) Last month, using my LG V10 and good headphones, yeah I could tell a difference on some tracks. For the majority, however, they sounded identical to Spotify extreme quality. Additionally the app does like to crash, and my wife would routinely have to restart the program on her laptop as it would stop in the middle of tracks and be totally unresponsive.

I do like Google Play and use the free storage to hold my tracks that aren't streamable (examples above) but I am not a huge fan of its interface.

I think you guys are right when you say it comes down to user preference, and at the moment mine is Spotify.

 

[VerizonSalesRep]

Nobody Uses Rhapsody....any...more?

 

[Dillan K]

They're all a heck of a lot better than that old Sony Walkman cassette player us old guys remember having to use for music on the go years ago.

That really puts it into perspective for this relatively old guy. I had an original yellow 'sport' walkman back in the day.

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

For the $10/mo plan both Spotify and Tidal stream at 320Kbps. I would LOVE to know how anyone can claim to here better sound quality on one versus the other.

 

[Dorian Anreiter]

I used to use deezer as it came free with my ee contract. But when I renewed my contract deezer cancelled my subscription. Then I tried all the streaming services, apart from tidal as I can't bear the idea of further enriching Kanye West (pathetic I know). I settled for gpm, I like fairly esoteric stuff yet Google has it all. And it provides a discount on stuff bought from play store.

 

[Mister K]

For the $10/mo plan both Spotify and Tidal stream at 320Kbps. I would LOVE to know how anyone can claim to here better sound quality on one versus the other.

I don't think there is a difference other than Tidal being louder. Saying that, a difference might be heard if they were encoding from different quality sources or something, but I don't think that's the case. As I said, I find it hard to detect the difference between Spotifys 320Kbps and Tidal's 1411Kbps on a lot of music, so I doubt there is any difference between the services at 320Kbps.

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

I don't think there is a difference other than Tidal being louder. Saying that, a difference might be heard if they were encoding from different quality sources or something, but I don't think that's the case. As I said, I find it hard to detect the difference between Spotifys 320Kbps and Tidal's 1411Kbps on a lot of music, so I doubt there is any difference between the services at 320Kbps.

There can definitely be a difference based on the actual encoding process, but I have a LOT of doubt that they would be audible to the human ear.

Odds are very good that they are both using the same master files from the studios.

 

[Hans Pedersen]

1. The app is absolute garbage. It has a 3.5 Star Rating in the Play Store, with over a 1 in 4 ratings as 1 star. It hasn't been updated since March, so it's basically unsupportd.
3. Lossless is inconsistent and doesn't work on many (or possibly most) songs
4. The max bitrate for songs that are either A) not available in lossless B) being streamed on a lower connection speed is less than or equal to (depending on the song and conditions) to the competitors
5. The library is limited (all 3 major competitors are at least 20% larger in libary)
7. The fact that I'm up to 7 counts as 7 and I don't feel a need to continue....

The ratings on this app is completely wrecked by trolls. The same way the Apple app is wrecked. Like you said, the disproportionately high number of 1 stars is an easy give away. The app is fine. I subscribed to Tidal HiFi for about a year before trying out the competition, like Qobuz, and I can tell you that Tidal has the major artists and a few exclusives on top of that. The Tidal app was extremely buggy and inconsistent early on, which could explain a lot of the low ratings too. Tidal are however more active in bug fixing and development than most apps, I'd say. Today it is a stable app with any feature you'd expect for music streaming. The catalogue sizes listed on Wikipedia are pretty much useless. No one is verifying any of those numbers the streaming services are claiming. I stopped using Qobuz simply because that is a service with too many missing artists and albums. I'm currently back on Spotify to see if I'm missing anything, but, I've noticed that the Spotify Windows app feels like it's stagnated in development.
If you have network issues giving you trouble streaming in lossless you have the same choice with Tidal as any other app, you can pre-load music for offline listening.
And to the claims that little or none of the music is in actual lossless format, I say bollox. I never came across an album I listened to that wasn't available in the lossless FLAC format.
TL;DR your 7 point list is really not more than a 1 or 2 possible points list.

My personal opinion about the value of Tidal compared to the competition. The only direct competitor is Qobuz, which also provide lossless music (they even offer an even more expensive 24-bit alternative if you have too much money to give away), but Tidal has a lot more big artist and albums in their catalogue. You will need a decent pair of earphones to appreciate the lossless format, but I'm guessing that's a non-issue if you're paying €20 a month for streaming music. So, if your budget allows it, I'd recommend Tidal over any of the other options out there at he moment.

 

[Sunhop]

In the original post you cite HiFi streaming as one of your points for Tidal being the best. Is several subsequent posts you push the $9.99 price point. HiFi streaming costs $19.99. You need to make up your mind if you want people to take you seriously.

There's nothing to make my mind up about. Tidal offers both services so they both should be taken into account while reviewing the app. No?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Sunhop]

The ratings on this app is completely wrecked by trolls. The same way the Apple app is wrecked. Like you said, the disproportionately high number of 1 stars is an easy give away. The app is fine. I subscribed to Tidal HiFi for about a year before trying out the competition, like Qobuz, and I can tell you that Tidal has the major artists and a few exclusives on top of that. The Tidal app was extremely buggy and inconsistent early on, which could explain a lot of the low ratings too. Tidal are however more active in bug fixing and development than most apps, I'd say. Today it is a stable app with any feature you'd expect for music streaming. The catalogue sizes listed on Wikipedia are pretty much useless. No one is verifying any of those numbers the streaming services are claiming. I stopped using Qobuz simply because that is a service with too many missing artists and albums. I'm currently back on Spotify to see if I'm missing anything, but, I've noticed that the Spotify Windows app feels like it's stagnated in development.
If you have network issues giving you trouble streaming in lossless you have the same choice with Tidal as any other app, you can pre-load music for offline listening.
And to the claims that little or none of the music is in actual lossless format, I say bollox. I never came across an album I listened to that wasn't available in the lossless FLAC format.
TL;DR your 7 point list is really not more than a 1 or 2 possible points list.

My personal opinion about the value of Tidal compared to the competition. The only direct competitor is Qobuz, which also provide lossless music (they even offer an even more expensive 24-bit alternative if you have too much money to give away), but Tidal has a lot more big artist and albums in their catalogue. You will need a decent pair of earphones to appreciate the lossless format, but I'm guessing that's a non-issue if you're paying €20 a month for streaming music. So, if your budget allows it, I'd recommend Tidal over any of the other options out there at he moment.

Tidal gets more hate because people actually know the guy that owns it. Sad but true

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Almeuit]

There's nothing to make my mind up about. Tidal offers both services so they both should be taken into account while reviewing the app. No?

Posted via the Android Central App

I believe what he meant was in your OP you were saying it was better simply due to the higher streaming -- once we countered that with well the price is doubled so it should be is when you came down to the $10 a month price.

Either way at $10 a month it is like all the other services. It boils down to "Do they have the music I like?" and that will vary from person to person.

 

[wlonsdale]

Sidenote..I love that dog in the pic!!

 

[robertllacy]

Sooo...the OP really likes Tidal?

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

Nobody Uses Rhapsody....any...more?

Marked as "Best Answer".

Well done good sir.

 

[deep350z]

So i just recently started using music streaming services within the last couple months. I started off using apple music just because you get 3 months free to try it out, my co-worker was using spotify and after trying it out it seemed to offer a better user experience with the social aspect etc. ( I still feel it has the best user experience). I also just recently purchased an onkyo dp-x1 DAP as well as some pioneer se-mhr5 headphones so i could use the balanced output of the onkyo DAP(which allows me to use both sets of DAC/AMPs in the onkyo at the same time, it has two built in).

After purchasing those items, i heard about Tidal and its HiFi streaming of CD quality music so i decided to try it out. In my experience Tidal just sounds better using this setup, even with out an EQ built in. Additionally I have not run into any songs that do not play in HiFi, you can force Tidal to always stream in HiFi by turning off adaptive streaming. It is also possible to verify the streaming quality of Tidal by using "USB audio player PRO", it allows you to stream Tidal through its app and it shows you the bit rate of the track. This app also allows you to use an EQ on tidals music (although to me streaming through tidal still sounds better for some reason). Ive tried to listen to the same tracks using poweramp, onkyos built in music app, apple music, and spotify, and for some reason i always go back to Tidal.

Originally my plan was to stick with spotify if i couldnt tell a difference in sound quality between the two. But since i do notice a difference (its not a huge difference but i notice it) i think im going to stick with Tidal. Also i do like the fact that they give more royalties to the artists and it has music videos.

Its probably not worth the extra $10 to the average consumer but I personally prefer it.

 

[clashcityrocker2]

Tried them all, GPM was by far and away the best.

Great quality (320k mp3), my own stuff for free, a great subscription service with great selection, in particular indie labels, family plan, universal access from do msny devices

 

[Ryan Gaumer]

Garth Brooks is not on Tidal

 

[Mill1978]

If you have the lossless subscription all of the content is Hifi and you can set your account to only play music in HiFi.....I have Spotify Tidal and GPM...I use Tidal the most because of the sound quality

Does tidal break down the number of hi-fi streams they have available versus not? Can I check if what I listen to has a hi-fi version?

If quality is the big reason to get tidal then it needs to have actual better quality (better source material than other services).In fact, it needs to have twice as good quality (which it does technically) for what people listen to.

If we're comparing the "normal" quality (320Kbps, $10/mo) then other things matter, like app quality and music discovery.

 

[anon(9637269)]

I think for ordinary listening, 320 kbps is fine, even mp3 V0 is good enough. If I wanted hi-fi, I'd probably need to pop some cds or vinyls in an extremely good speaker system. And there are only a very few of records that I want to listen in a lossless way, thus for me quantity matters over quality, so I am using Spotify. Hell, if I want to listen to Lemonade at hifi (why would I do that anyway, I'm a Beyonce fan tho) I'd probably just purchase it from Qobuz (when it is available) or just grab its CD. I'm just really old school when it comes to music.