Tidal vs. Spotify

You're absolutely wrong Cerrot, I stand by my previous message. Those 4-5 playlists aren't hundreds of songs long, they're 35-45 songs long. And if you do a search under Elton John, as you suggest, the results return exactly 4 playlists that have anything to do with the 1970s. Just did it myself, looking at it onscreen right now.

If you do a search under Mama Cass, again as you suggest, you get exactly 3 playlists...2 of which are for songs from 2015, and one which has over 400 songs but any connection to the 1970s is purely random - it includes songs from Benny Goodman and Bruno Mars. Bruno Mars wasn't even alive in the 1970s. Go ahead, try it yourself, you'll see what I'm seeing. Did you actually do any of the searches you suggest, before typing your last message?

I'm not saying Tidal is a poor service, I'm simply explaining to you why it's not head-scratching why everyone with access to an internet connection hasn't signed up. Having bitrate isn't enough, they also have to have the library AND the interface and search algorithms to access it. Some days, I've worked so hard my brain is fried, I don't know who I want to listen to, I want to sort of just listen to random radio from a particular time period and maybe re-discover songs I'd forgotten about. We're talking about decade-related playlists...I'm not asking it to make up a playlist of artists who enjoy playing Scrabble on weekends while wearing rasberry berets. A decade-playlist isn't rocket science.

Seriously Cymbop, you never sit down to listen and think to yourself, "I'd like to revisit a particular time period and discover songs I may have missed"? Or maybe hear songs from only a particular era, but want them randomly chosen because you're mentally focused on other tasks and just want to be surprised? That has never happened to you?

I do that all the time. Other people must, or you wouldn't have Time/Life doing all those infomercials selling bundles of 800 CDs filled with 46,000 songs from the '60s/70s/etc. I think there's a lot of interest in playlists that capture particular time periods in music history.

Gator: totally. I'll use Pandora when I want background music that I don't have to select.

Just wanted to point out how spoiled and complain-y we are (me included) when we just can't be bothered to pick out an album to play, after we've been provided access to nearly all the music that's ever been digitized.

BcGator - my results may be different as I am logged on. It may learn my tastes, not sure yet. It takes me ten minutes tops about once a week to search and add new multi-hour playlists and albums. Its pretty easy and the music is uncompressd, whch does blow spotify, pandora and what ever other mp3 service is available.

Following off BCGator, I think as a platform Spotify is just more competent at this time. As I've said previously, Tidal very clearly sounds better. I only get to listen off my good rig on occasion, but I'm always listening in my car, off my deepblue2 in the kitchen, off my laptop while I'm traveling, and off my iphone on the go.

My hope would be that Tidal either forces Spotify to go lossless, or Tidal gets the level of robustness/connectivity that Spotify currently has. If I had the money, I'd have Tidal for reference, Spotify for mobility, and Pandora for radio. But paying for premium service for 3 services just seems a little silly.