When I downloaded and signed up for Tidal recently, I finally made the leap from Spotify because I had to, for coverage on TechRadar – but I must admit I was a little excited to try it out.
I never used to be an audiophile, but I’ve tested enough of the best headphones and best earbuds for TechRadar to become a convert – there’s something magical about higher-resolution audio (this is 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 dishes out hi-res CD-quality audio. So to me, getting let loose in Tidal was like if 10-year-old me was let loose in Legoland.
Never did I think that I’d be back on Spotify after trying out Tidal’s souped up offering. More than that, I didn’t even get through a week of streaming hi-res music before I was clicking on that green-and-black sound wave logo. Three days! My Tidal trial hadn’t even expired!
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 issues with it for me to bounce straight off – enough issues in fact, to create a nice little listicle! Audiophiles are already shaking their heads, tutting and closing this article, but people who are on the fence between Tidal and Spotify might find themselves agreeing with some of the things I’ve said.
Reason 1: the playlist problem
The teething problems with Tidal began as soon as started it. I’ve spent a decade creating a huge number of incredible playlists (and an even huger number of really terrible ones). And while there is a way – arguably a few ways – to convert your Spotify playlists to Tidal, you have to pay if you transfer over 500 songs’ worth of playlists. At last count, my library was about ten times that.
I only managed to transfer about eight playlists over to Tidal, and so when I was trying to enjoy my favorite songs in hi-res, I was spending more time re-building my old playlists than I was actually listening to them!
My job is to fiddle around with tech; I don’t want to do that in my spare time too. And after building about five playlists, I got sick of the process and started simply using Spotify for the ones I hadn’t recreated. That was the start of the problems, but it’s not what made me stop Tidal for good…
Reason 2: lagging, buffering and bugging
I had a lot of trouble listening to Tidal.
Whether I streamed on my computer, on my phone or on my iPad, Tidal would often take some time to buffer each song. Sometimes it was a few seconds, sometimes it was literal minutes. It turns out that streaming hi-res audio over the internet takes a lot of loading (as does streaming low-res audio on Tidal, for some reason).
I couldn’t exactly get into the flow with my songs if I had to wait patiently for each one to start. And this totally ruled out using Tidal for my workout playlist too; I’m not waiting minutes between each set of weights so my next motivation song can play!
That wasn’t all, though, as I found the PC app very buggy. It often decided to change computer input on a whim, jumping from the default output to other PC outputs for no real reason. When I booted up the app it’d sometimes decide to begin on a random output I’d never use, and I’d only realize when music playback failed.
Nearly every time I used Tidal, I ended up having to fight it simply just to listen to music, which was incredibly infuriating. Spotify may not have high-res audio (yet?) but at least it works!
Reason 3: the accessibility issues
Beyond its issues, 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 monthly cost of Tidal compared to the $0 / £0 / AU$0 of Spotify’s Free tier was an intimidating spectre to face for when my free trial ran out.
I’m talking about the tech side of it too. You need pretty premium headphones to make the most of Tidal’s high-res audio, and that isn’t cheap. Moreover, Tidal didn’t actually let me listen on its Max quality setting via Bluetooth (ie, the way most people listen), and so I couldn’t even enjoy it most of the time.
I mostly listen to music when I’m out and about, so my Tidal app constantly telling me that I couldn’t listen to music at a high resolution really made me question why I was signed up in the first place. Sure, I could find excellent wired headphones and an adaptor for my phone, or I could listen on my computer with my proper gaming cans. But that’s not how I listen to music… at least, it’s not the only way.
Spotify Wrapped shows me getting 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 out and about, when I’m working on my computer, when I’m at work, when I’m playing from speakers in the living room or at others’ houses; it’s 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 a service, and start thinking it’s an everyday part of our tech phone. From my experience, Tidal didn’t feel like that.
I’ve been using Spotify for 10 years now (or maybe more, but my first playlist was created a decade ago) and so Tidal always had an uphill battle to win me over. This time around, it wasn’t successful, due to the issues mentioned above that I kept stubbing my toe on. Maybe, as tech gets more advanced, it’ll get a leg up over Spotify… but I’ll wait until then to try it again.
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tom.bedford@futurenet.com (Tom Bedford)
