Putting Tidal in Perspective

[firedog]

29 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

One of my neighbors is a 22 year old female college student. She is a music lover (mostly top 40 pop) and she

also plays piano and violin,. She and her boyfriend share a family plan subscription to Apple Music.

 

She LOVES it. She also has been on Spotify

 

I asked her how Apple Music compared to Tidal.

 

Answer: "Tidal? Never heard of it..."

 

I mentioned Jay-Z as part owner..still no familiarity.

 

So a little perspective. I think Tidal in the end is a VERY small player in streaming.

 

 

Very true. We often forget what a small world the audiophile world is. Spotify adds more users each year than the total at Tidal. And just another reason to think “MQA is vapor ware”.

[firedog]

6 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Yes, but what makes it a bit puzzling is that Tidal also offers a lossy tier of service..and still not traction.

No free tier to attract initial.users may have something to do with it, as does their inferior user interface.

[firedog]

2 hours ago, Sonicularity said:

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.

The other alternative to Tidal everyone forgets about is Deeer, which also has a lossless tier; it has quite a good interface, too. 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, Taz777 said:

I'm about to sign up to TIDAL HiFi. In terms of using TIDAL HiFi with a computer-based audio system, is the audio quality good enough? I keep reading stories of TIDAL going under (even from 2017!) and how MQA isn't all it's cracked up to be. At the end of the day, if the music sounds at least as good as, or better than, CD-quality, and is recorded well enough, then does any of this really matter?

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.