Tidal is a music streaming service similar to Spotify that costs $20 a month for CD-quality music streaming. Purchased for $56 million by Jay-Z in early 2015, the service is being marketed as a high-quality streaming service that alleges to pay more royalties to artists than Spotify’s $0.006 cents a play, but the exact amount has not been made public. The relaunch of Tidal was met with a lot of criticism due to shares of the company given to top-grossing artists including, but not limited to, Beyoncé, Rhianna, Coldplay, and Madonna. Jay-Z made a spectacle of this ordeal, handing out shares live, and the whole thing seemed like a meeting for the rich to get richer, and hypocritical to the mission statement of getting more money in the hands of the artists.
The actual service, however, is a brilliant thing. The difference in audio between Tidal’s 1411kbps music quality and Spotfy’s 328kbps is astounding. It is richer and fuller, and makes you wonder where this level of quality has been. There are negative consequences for this great fidelity, and some songs do not start the instant you click on them, but with a delay, and sometimes this creates a gap between songs. This annoying side effect is not necessarily due to Tidal’s own streaming algorthyhm, but a number of factors including local bandwith. It takes more processing power to stream a 30-50MB file. This is a serious disadvantage, though.
The interface is reminiscent of Spotify, so the learning curve is minimal, though the items on the menu bar are clearer and more helpful as guide to the over 30 million songs available. Tidal has gone out of its way to add artists to its service, but not all albums may be available. This is not too different from Spotify’s inconveniences (where are the new King Gizzard and Oh Sees records???) and will only improve. Audio-search is a Shazam like feature, something Spotify is without, and it will allow you the song, if it finds it, to your library.
One strange element of Tidal is its 720p HD music videos. All 75,000 of them. It uses Flash and there were some problems with video streaming on some videos. This may be an application for a more casual music listener, and did not appeal to me.
The price is double that of Spotify’s, at a whopping $20. This is really the only reason not to go ahead and jump on the Tidal train. There is a $10 Tidal service, but the quality is lower at 328kbps. It is probably a point of pride to some—you can tell your friends that you’re giving more to the artists, but it’s hinderance is undeniable.
If you can get over Jay Z helping the richer get richer, or if you care about the fidelity of your music or if you can even tell, then dishing out $20 to try out Tidal for a month would not be so bad. I would wait, however, until Tidal works out its kinks, but maybe Spotify will get CD quality streaming by then.
-Bryan Díaz, Writer