Tidal

[Drew]

Is anybody trying out the music streaming service recently acquired by Jay-Z? It streams lossless audio, high def music videos and also includes curated content.

I started my free month trial a week ago and have not fired up Spotify since. I am enjoying it so far, but don't see most of the current Spotify users switching anytime soon. The price of the subscription is double that of Spotify's ($23.99 per month in Aussie), which is the main reason why most people think it's not gonna take off. I do think it's worth it though - the audio quality is amazing, and I usually pay an average of $20 for a CD with equal sound quality anyway. The only thing I'm not enjoying is the terrible UI/UX of the web player, I really hope they will release a desktop app soon.

What do you think?

[FlyingJesus]

I still don't get the appeal of paying for music that you then still don't own tbh, never been a spotify user either

[Stadiums]

I had a look at it but still prefer Spotify, I'm fine with the quality of Spotify so wouldn't want to pay for TIDAL :p

[xxMATTGxx]

I think only people who actually notice the quality difference will probably "switch" but because of the higher price tag I think Spotify will still be okay. The majority of people won't pay higher prices for what you can get cheaper elsewhere.

I guess we will see.

[Drew]

I suppose it depends on what type of music listener you are. If you're very selective about the music you listen to, it's probably not worth subscribing to a music streaming service. In my case, I listen to everything and love checking out new artists, so sometimes I'd stream their music before deciding whether to get the CD. If you don't care about quality too much, Tidal is probably not worth your time but man, I've just been spending the past week listening to sweet, sweet music. The Interstellar soundtrack in high fidelity is my life right now

[j0rd]

until they release some sort of free version, I can't see it kicking off at all

[Stephen]

tbh all I see this tidal doing was showing us who the greedy celebs are

plus that video of them was cringe of all cringe

[lemons]

unless you have super cool expensive headphones you will NOT notice a huge difference in sound quality! the app is so slow for me and too many clicks to get to where i want defo not worth 20 pounds!

i will be sticking with spotify

[lawrawrrr]

I won't be changing from spotify mainly because I don't have that much money to spend on stuff like that. I use free spotify at the moment and I don't find the quality too bad, adverts are annoying but whatever. Better than pirating right?

I reckon all the celebs in this though will remove all their music from Spotify in a few months to force people over and spotify will become all indie (which i am not complaining about)

[peteyt]

To me Tidal seems like a response to the fact many artists feel ripped off by spotify, feeling they don't make enough profit. The problem however is people aren't just going to pay more for the same type of service so they have tried to make it stand out with high definition audio, videos and curated content.

The big problem for me is it ignores the key reason people use Spotify - They want to listen to music free but also legally. From what I've seen a lot of people who at one point downloaded music (some may still) now use Spotify. It's a lot less riskier to stream music for free than to risk downloading and getting caught.

I read online that around 25% of Spotify users are premium paying users which people believe isn't bad but it also means that there are 75% not paying. I know that most people won't pay for spotify, the same way that if Netflix had a free service but with some adverts, the majority of people would take the free service - it's a good enough compromise. Now the big issue Tidal faces is how to get these non paying users on a service with cheaper deals, to move to a newer less well known service with a higher price. Most people won't care about the extras when it comes down to money.

Also interestingly Taylor Swift who famously took all her music off spotify and youtube (seems to be only official videos of hers now - the rest aren't the proper versions of her songs) has joined Tidal, which brings me back to my first point of Tidal being used to try and fight the percentages offered by services such as the like to spotify.

I'd also like to add that I think Taylor Swift made a massive mistake removing her music. As I've mentioned I believe many former illegal downloaders have moved to spotify as it allows them to listen to the music they want but without any legal issues. However I believe if artists like Swift remove their music these users that aren't willing to pay will probably end up going back to their old ways of illegal downloading. It's kind of in some ways unavoidable and while Spotify could be greedy (I don't know their percentages and so on) some profit is better than none