When I recently downloaded Tidal and signed up, I finally made the jump from Spotify because I had to, for coverage on Ny Breaking – but I have to admit I was a little excited to try it out.
I’ve never been an audiophile, but I’ve tested enough of the best headphones and best earbuds that Ny Breaking could be converted – there’s something magical about higher resolution audio (that’s why we can’t have nice things; we get too used to them ).
Tidal’s made a name for itself as a streaming service that offers high-resolution, CD-quality audio. So for me, being let loose in Tidal was like being let loose in Legoland as a ten year old.
Never did I think I’d be back on Spotify after trying out Tidal’s souped-up offering. In fact, I hadn’t even streamed high-resolution music for a week before I clicked on that green and black sound wave logo. Three days! My Tidal trial hadn’t even expired yet!
That’s not to say Tidal is a bad streaming service (on the contrary, it’s one of the best music streaming services), but I had enough problems with it that I could get away with it right away – enough problems, in fact, to make a nice list! Audiophiles are already shaking their heads and closing this article, but people who are deciding between Tidal and Spotify might agree with some of the things I said.
Reason 1: The playlist problem
The teething problems with Tidal started as soon as it started. I’ve spent a decade creating many incredible playlists (and an even greater number of truly terrible ones). And while there is a way – maybe a few ways – to convert your Spotify playlists to Tidal, you’ll have to pay if you transfer more than 500 songs worth of playlists. At last count, my library was about ten times that size.
I only managed to transfer about eight playlists to Tidal, and so when I tried to enjoy my favorite songs in high resolution, I spent more time rebuilding my old playlists than actually listening to them!
My job is to play with technology; I don’t want to do that in my spare time either. And after I created about five playlists, I got tired of the process and just started using Spotify for the playlists I didn’t recreate. That was the start of the problems, but it’s not the reason I quit Tidal for good…
Reason 2: lagging behind, buffering and eavesdropping
I had a lot of of problems listening to Tidal.
Whether I was streaming on my computer, on my phone, or on my iPad, Tidal often took some time to buffer each song. Sometimes it lasted a few seconds, sometimes it was literally minutes. It turns out that streaming high-resolution audio over the Internet takes a lot of loading time (as does streaming low-resolution audio on Tidal, for some reason).
I couldn’t really get into the flow with my songs if I had to wait patiently for each one to start. And this completely ruled out using Tidal for my workout playlist as well; I don’t wait minutes between each set of weights so my next motivational song can play!
But that wasn’t all, because I found the PC app very buggy. It often decided to change computer input on a whim and jump from standard output to other PC output for no real reason. When I started the app, it would sometimes decide to start with a random output that I would never use, and I didn’t realize it until music playback failed.
Almost every time I used Tidal I ended up having to fight it just to listen to music, which was incredibly annoying. Spotify may not have high-resolution audio (yet?), but at least it does work!
Reason 3: the accessibility problems
Problems aside, Tidal simply isn’t accessible to everyone.
And I’m not just talking about the price, even though the $10.99 / £10.99 / $11.99 Tidal monthly cost compared to $0 / £0 / AU$0 of Spotify’s Free tier was an intimidating specter to experience once my free trial was over.
I’m also talking about the technical side of it. You’ll need some pretty premium headphones to get the most out of Tidal’s high-resolution audio, and that doesn’t come cheap. Plus, Tidal didn’t really let me listen at the maximum quality setting over Bluetooth (that is, the way most people listen), and so I couldn’t even enjoy it most of the time.
I usually listen to music when I’m on the go, so my Tidal app constantly telling me that I couldn’t listen to high-resolution music really made me wonder why I was signed in in the first place. Sure, I could find excellent wired headphones and an adapter for my phone, or I could listen on my computer with my appropriate gaming cans. But that’s not how I listen to music… at least, it’s not only way.
Spotify Wrapped shows that I’ve gotten between 50 and 100 hours of music listening time each year for the past few years, and that’s not just from one source. It’s from when I’m on the road, when I’m working on my computer, when I’m at work, when I’m playing from speakers in the living room or at other people’s homes; it comes from a whole range of methods.
A music streaming app has to be so minimal and easy to use that we forget it’s its own app or service, and start thinking it’s an everyday part of our tech phone. From my experience, Tidal didn’t feel that way.
I’ve been using Spotify for ten years now (or maybe longer, but my first playlist was created ten years ago) so Tidal always had an uphill battle to win me over. This time it was not a success, due to the problems mentioned above that I kept stubbing my toe on. Maybe as the technology becomes more advanced it will gain an edge over Spotify… but I’ll wait until then to try again.