Putting Tidal in Perspective

[Sonicularity]

I have to admit that one of Tidal's best attributes is the MQA library that forgoes the annoying watermarks from Universal's catalog.  The military discount that I enjoy as a veteran at $11.99 USD per month is a nice deal as well.  

 

Without Roon, the Tidal desktop and web application simply do not work for me.  I'm not a playlist fan.  I want a complete library of albums like a personal record store where I can shuffle the entire contents.  I also want the ability to add my own music to seamlessly fill in any gaps with music that would embed itself into the entire ecosystem from streaming holdouts; though, perhaps maybe not Taylor Swift's latest recordings.

 

If Qobuz launches in the US and works with Roon, as is the current rumor, and the watermarks are not present, I would drop Tidal immediately.

 

The interface is so important to me that I would rather go back to mp3 and Google music if Tidal sees any detrimental changes rather than look for a lossless solution without the features I enjoy.  If Roon and Google played nicely together, I'd take that too.

[Sonicularity]

19 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Interesting perspective. Thanks. Do you happen to remember where you first heard of Tidal?

 

For some reason I don't recall..it may have been from a Rolling Stone article.

 

 

 

I've tried all of the available streaming music services in the US going back to Rhapsody in 2005.  Though, I initially thought Rhapsody was called "Rap City", and I nearly brushed it aside since I was not the biggest fan of rap music.  Since then, I have always been routinely searching for new services with large libraries, good audio quality, and an interface that worked for me. 

 

What works for me is essentially having the ability to shuffle my entire library of tracks.  I add music by albums only, and the application should be intuitive enough to automatically add the artist and all of the songs from those albums to be displayed separately.  I also need the ability to add my own music to work perfectly with the streaming service with regards to similar artists or genres when playing various radios or genre specific plays.  Finally, I need to see how many times I have played a particular track.

 

Roon does all of this and more with Tidal.   Google is really good, too, but the music is lossy.  I can't hear a difference with any of the music I have ABX tested (over 100 songs with Foobar/SoX), but I know it is not lossless, and I would simply prefer Red Book for peace of mind.  I really like Roon's integration with Tidal, but I hope Qobuz is available soon as a replacement.   If it doesn't happen, and Tidal can manage to stay afloat as a business, I will continue to use it, despite my decidedly negative feelings toward MQA and my wish not to support it.

 

 

 

[Sonicularity]

5 hours ago, firedog said:

I CD quality streaming sounds very good. I don't think you will be disappointed.  And if it goes under - so what? You are paying monthly, so you have got nothing to lose. 

 

For those that use streaming services as the bulk of their music library, having to switch to an alternate service can be a major headache.

 

Before Roon allowed for Tidal to be integrated into their player, I could never switch to Tidal from Google as the interface doesn't work for me.  I had no way to shuffle my entire library in Tidal and it was no easy task to convert my Google library to Tidal no matter what online tools or my own data manipulation could muster. 

 

Roon makes Tidal more like Google with regards to the interface and features and allows for the ability to shuffle my entire library and to add my own music to fill in gaps with music that is not available to stream.    While I now have more albums in my Roon library with Tidal than I do in my Google library, I'm still missing about 200 artists in Tidal that I currently have in Google. 

 

It took 2 long weekends to get my Roon/Tidal library set up to be nearly complete, but I'd hate to have to do all of that again anytime soon.  If Qobuz is made available with Roon, I'm hoping my library can be matched with the metadata.  Though, matching my Tidal albums to Qobuz should be easier, as Tidal exports are much better implemented than Google exports.