I, a Spotify Premium Subscriber, Used Tidal for One Month

Initial Thoughts and Exploration:

(Author’s note: While Tidal has both a computer and a mobile application, only the desktop version will be discussed in this article. Audio was tested using my Audio-Technica ATH-M50 Stereo Monitor Headphones.)

imitation tbh

If, like me, you go into Tidal already being very familiar with Spotify, the first thing you’ll notice right out of the gate is that it looks exactly like Spotify for the most part. It has the same sidebar setup, the same features on the front page, and the same structure of public-created playlists; hell, it even has the same sort of colourless washed-out aesthetic to it. It has a bland, yet clean and professional look to it, and its presentation feels about as much of a red carpet treatment as you would expect given the pedigree that it has.

At first, I was absolutely gobsmacked that the computer version of Tidal was browser-only and had no desktop program, as it was “still in development”, but after giving it some time and letting it sink in, I grew to not really mind it as much. Though it takes a couple seconds to queue up a song, reloading a previous page is near-instant, and searching is way quicker than it is on Spotify’s desktop app. One thing I cannot stand about the browser app is the inability to select multiple files at once. For instance, say you want to add five different songs from one artist into a playlist you create. That means having to individually select each track and select “Add to Playlist” for each individual one. The same goes for trying to take songs out of a playlist. It’s minor nitpick, yes, but it takes a lot of time that could be made a lot more feasible with either better browser integration or a native desktop app.

Given how young the service is, I was worried that Tidal wouldn’t have nearly as massive a selection as Spotify, but it’s pretty close to their level. Like with Spotify, the musical selection available to choose from varies on a label-to-label basis rather than an individual artist basis. Say you want to listen to the album No Kill No Beep Beep by Q and Not U. If Q and Not U’s discography isn’t available on Tidal, you likely won’t be finding albums by Fugazi or Rites of Spring or any other Dischord Records artist either. Still, despite not being as massive, it’s still pretty serviceable for a new streaming service. I was able to recreate my “songs I’m currently into” playlist (below) pretty accurately on Tidal.

side by side playlists

As far as the touted lossless audio is concerned, take it from an audiophile, it’s fantastic. If you have a good-enough system or pair of headphones to where you can actually discern between audio files of different sizes, it really makes a difference. The lack of compression gives the songs you listen to the space that they need to sound good, the bass is very resonant, and everything just sounds as crisp as it should. Favourites of mine that were nigh-unlistenable due to their blaring compression on Spotify like Bleachers’ “I Wanna Get Better” and The Dismemberment Plan’s “What Do You Want Me to Say?” sound great thanks to the lossless compression rate. When it comes to the marquee sound quality, this is one field in which Tidal passes its competitors with flying colours.

However, lossless audio alone isn’t enough to get $20 out of the average music listener every month, so it’s up to the rest of Tidal’s features to allure people and get them to subscribe to the service. In that respect, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that this is perhaps the biggest reason that Tidal is without a sizeable subscriber base, because while it does perhaps offer more features than Spotify, it’s pretty limp overall when you consider the price tag. Its touted features are either ones that Spotify also has, such as offline capabilities and publically-sharable playlists, or just ones that the average subscriber will forget are there after a or so week of using it.

When it comes to the marquee sound quality, this is one field in which Tidal passes its competitors with flying colours.

For instance, Tidal has integrated video support, mainly for new music videos, which is a nice addition, but only the really popular artists have any to watch on there, so it’s a pretty easy feature to forget about. Which is a shame, because with how good the integrated video player actually is, and how they have an entire section for videos on the front page, it has the potential to usher in a new wave of relevance for music videos among the average music consumer, especially if other streaming services stepped in to try to one-up them.

integrated video (rae sremmurd)
Jay-Z thought that everyone was gonna think Tidal was the best thing ever, but THEY KNOOOOOW BETTER

Tidal pretty prominently boasts its emphasis on music discovery, way more than you’d expect from a service that’s co-owned by some of the most famous men and women in the world. It’s something I was hoping they would be heavy on, since Spotify has always been pretty light on its artist discovery. However, despite putting more of a focus on it, I wouldn’t say Tidal is necessarily better at turning you onto new music you’ll enjoy. It has a whole section dedicated to discovering “the music of tomorrow”, which is wonderful in theory, but where it fails is in execution.

Sure, you can discover things you’ve never heard of before, but there’s no way to sort it by what type of music you’re into or looking for; it’s just strewn about haphazardly like a musical swap meet. So, for instance, if you’re looking for a new abstract electronic music producer to get lost in, you’ll have randomly click through 50 or so songs by generic, self-identifying indie rock, bubblegum post-hardcore and soulless southern hip-hop in hope of finding something you’ll maybe like a little bit.

There’s a subsection in Discovery called “Featured”, which has a revolving door of current releases by underground, you’ve-probably-never-heard-of-the, artists, each with their own little tab and one-sentence descriptor. This can make it a little bit easier to find something you might vibe with, but with only nine revolving slots at a time, it makes you wonder how much you have to pay to get your album in the “Featured” spot, because the odds of those just being free altruistic pushed on behalf of the Tidal staff are roughly one in infinity-billion.

tidal discovery

For all its talk of you, the Tidal subscriber, using Discovery to “exclusively discover the music of tomorrow so that it becomes their music of today”, you’ll get way more out of the “Genres” tab on the sidebar than you ever will with the Discovery feature. The Genres section is actually pretty good for seeing what’s new and hot in respective styles, even though it does pretty obviously sort it by popularity. At the end of the day, Tidal’s options for music discovery are decent, but it isn’t any better or worse than that of its competitors, and I’d much sooner recommend a service like 8tracks for music discovery instead.

Like Spotify, Tidal has an “Artist Radio” feature. Whenever you press this button on any artist’s page, it’ll automatically put recommended tracks in your Play Queue. I never used the one Spotify had to offer, but Tidal’s seemed really cool. Turns out, though, it’s a pretty worthless feature, all things considered. All it really does is compile a collection of around 50 or so random tracks from the artist and the artists listed in their “Similar Artists” subsection, and just shuffle these 11 artists, give or take, into a playlist for you. Compared to even Pandora’s laughably basic idea of what makes for music relating to what you made a station out of, Tidal’s radio feature is really primitive, and subscribers will likely forget that it’s there pretty immediately.

artist radio (death grips)

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