Tidal vs. Spotify

After some procrastination I got around to trying Tidal yesterday. I had been relying heavily on Spotify for the last year or so for digital, when I'm too lazy to spin my vinly. Well, I'm now quite sold on the Tidal $20 a month offering and have made the switch. A few main points:

1) The sound quality difference is clear, particularly clear on some tracks which I'm intimately familiar with. I now think I've been silly to play with an uncompressed solution up until now. It's really quite a breakthrough to get uncompressed streaming - a bit of a revelation really.

2) I actually prefer Tidal's interface to Spotify. It's cleaner, less busy, less 'c$%p" everywhere. I just hope Tidal doesn't try to copy every Spotify feature. The interface and feature set is perfectly fine as-is.

3) Catalog feels like it may be less than Spotify's, but to Cerrot's point above, it's surely getting better, so that should fix itself over time.

4) There seems to be some stability issues with Tidal, but I've had plenty of crazy stability issues with Spotify's client too. If anything I expect to be happier in this respect with Tidal as it has fewer 'stuff' going on (For example, Spotify keeps suggesting to me what my FB friends are listening to. I actually don't give a what some random friend is listening to). If anything Tidal feels a bit more stable through Chrome vs. using a standalone client - it's possibly consuming a lot less computer resources and it really feels, looks and works quite fluidly.

5) As 2bgeorge noted above, the key downside I'm experiencing is that I was using Spotify's iPad app as a remote for my desktop (source). Strangely it took Spotify eons to actually launch that feature, but it is great (It has some stability issues too, but generally works ok). I began to leave feedback to Tidal about this on their Help site and there was a recent/related response from them noting that they are working hard and fast on this feature, so that's good to hear.

Overall, despite kinks (there are always some tradeoffs) Tidal feels like a no-brainer for any audiophile. Frankly, if one is an audiophile and cares about quality I can't really see how Spotify could be a consideration anymore. I feel a bit foolish not to have switched from Spotify to Tidal earlier.

Late reply, but Cerrot I am using the downloaded app. The issues I've had have occurred while using the app, not a browser. It's run fine off and on the last few days, only had to restart a couple of times.

It absolutely does sound better than Spotify, though I prefer Spotify's interface and access to various playlists. Just seems like more content on Spotify...not just in absolute terms, but more different ways to find new content. But the sound quality has Spotify beat.

Sounds great, Bcgator. I am in love with Tidal and scratching my head that more have not embraced it. I haven't purchased a CD since tidal (I was spending $100-$200 every moth on CD's).

Poke around some of the playlists some of the users have put together. There are s e 3,4 and 10-15 hour playlists. I have been discovering new music daily...

Still in love with Tidal here. And while the suggestions, artist radio, and interface of Spotify are super-convenient, imagine going back five years in time with the following offer:

Them: We'll give you CD-quality access to 85% of the recorded albums in the history of music, for $20 a month.

Me: Yeah, well, it sucks if it won't pick out the music I want to listen to for me.

I'd look like a real a**hole, wouldn't I?

I can see a lot of reasons why Spotify users haven't migrated.

Do this, just for one example...pretend you want to explore the decade of the 1970s and put "70s" in the search box of Tidal, and then do the same in Spotify. If you put "70s" in the Spotify search box you get lots of playlists with great 70s music, whether you want disco, glam rock, AM radio hits, etc. That same search on Tidal gets you around 5 or 6 limited playlists of actual songs by their original artists. The rest are made up of tribute-band songs...great hits done by someone nobody has ever heard of. That's just one example. Go ahead and try it...the 3rd playlist shown is not of original artists, the 4th isn't even 70s songs. One of the lists is "Woman of Rock", including Alanis Morisette...had she even hit puberty by the end of the '70s?

I'm sure once their library gets bigger, and they hire someone who was alive in the 1970s to make sure their '70s playlists don't have Alanis Morisette on them, they'll hit their stride and you'll see people flock there in droves. I just don't think they're there yet.