Music Streaming Services

Thanks for the info.
I'm still waiting to see what happens with Spotify.
For now, I listen at work to Spotify at their lower rates, or ripped music at home.

Randy

 

I'm currently on the 90 day free trial, haven't decided yet if I will pay. Kind of hoping Tidal will try to lure me back with a lower price.

 

Looks like Tidal is trying to drop the hammer on their competitors. They are essentially now just selling their HiFi Plus hi-res plan, but for the lower price of the regular HiFi.

Details here. Pretty damn happy with that!

 

Does Tidal do annual plans and is the Universal Music watermark still a thing?

 

Nope, and unsure.

 

Are they getting ready to go belly up?

 

I'd wager is just doesn't make sense to have two tiers. The HiFi Plus is probably a small portion of the business right now, bandwidth is cheap enough to give everyone hi res, and it gives them an advertising edge.

In any case, I'm now getting hi res for the same price I was already paying, so I'm a happy camper.

 

It ended around 2019.

 

Any new info on MQA in Tidal files?

 

Tidal's price drop puts me in a pickle. I'm a long time Spotify user due to their vastly superior catalog, extremely effective discovery algorithm, and excellent user playlist offerings. I've never once had a single artist, album, or track fail to appear when I search for it. The same could not be said for Tidal back when I subscribed. However, the SQ from Tidal's redbook quality resolution was noticeably better than Spotify's 320kbps. Was it night and day? No. But it was noticeable enough that I didn't need to relegate streaming to "discovery mode" only. I could do dedicated listening with Tidal.

But at the time I could not justify the added price of Tidal Hifi for such a limited catalog on top of Spotify. So I relinquished myself to Spotify alone, and just kept that listening to more passive, discovery mode. I guess my question is, now that Tidal includes the higher-res material in the same Hifi price class, does anyone feel that Tidal's catalog has grown to be more extensive? Is there still the same dedicated push for hip-hop and related genres?

I'd consider going back for the SQ, given this much more competitive price, but only if they've improved on their catalog.

P.S. Why the f*ck can't Spotify get their sh*t together, release Spotify Supremium, and just charge something reasonable like $14.99/month? All of this would be completely moot if they would just freaking DO IT.

 

I use Tidal and never listen to hip hop or most of their front page stuff and find tons to listen to. Their search leaves a lot to be desired like when I find a band and hit view all albums only to not find the one I am looking for. Yet when I type the album name in, miraculously it appears.

Does Tidal have everything, nope, but it has all the new and on someones list of new music for the year as it relates to indie stuff, ambient, electronic, classical, etc, that I could ever want. One thing I am doing is reducing new music discovery and going back in time to tried and true stuff for my Tidal listening. There are not enough years left for me to be worried about sampling new stuff to fin the next thing that is my personal discovery. Out of 100 new albums, I might find 5 that would be listened to more than once.

Anyway, I would also not get my hopes up too much about hi-res, I think that slice of Tidal is even smaller than one would think, and don't get me started on the re-masters that they sometimes use (redbook or high res) that are crap compared to the originals.

Oh, re Spotify. My take is they are watching what is or is not happening with "hi-res". I think they realize 96% - 98% of their audience could care less. It is obvious Tidal was not getting the numbers they hoped for. You must remember we audio geeks are a very small minority of music consumers.

 

That's a good way to look at it. And I could always just buy the album of something that I really like that may have been on Spotify but not Tidal. Extra step/cost, but if I like it enough, might as well own it.

I don't and only dove into "hi-res" for a very short period of time years ago when it first started rolling out. IME, redbook does everything good enough for me.

I realize this point as well, and I do get it from a business perspective. They dominate the market for streaming, and for good reason (case in point: myself). For me, it would just be the icing on the cake and enable me to stay with the user interface and ecosystem I know and love, with all my saved playlists, and extensive catalog, all while hearing it at in the least redbook quality.

 

Tidal is chasing listeners and that’s what most of their subscribers are listening to. That said with their vast catalogs and access to user listening data they could easily tailor the home screen to more suitably match a user’s listening tastes.

That takes some of the joy out of listening imo but keep in mind a lot of their users probably discover music through tiktok.

I read something about the big push now being spatial aka atmos audio because it’s much more obvious to users.

They don’t seem to be losing listeners without lossless+ so other than appeasing a few thousand music nerds is there really a need? Their free tier means any song or playlist someone shares can be accessed by anyone and that leads to their massive advantage in playlists which aside from the better home page experience is the main reason to use the service imo. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when someone really dives into AI curation because that should be a big win for users.

 

This may be the jist of their delayed response to a HiFi tier. I pretty much use Qobuz for myself, but still have a Spotify account for my wife and kid's music. While competitors, they are also complementary products to a certain extent until they release their hi-res tier.

But like everything else in life, follow the money. Do the rights holders give Spotify a headache for access to higher resolution files, or is Spotify just being cheap because they can and risk/reward is still in the red.

 

I just looked at some numbers, some of which are a bit old, but telling. Spotify has about 400 million plus users, and 180 million are paid. They pay to get rid of the ads! Next biggest is Apple with about 78 million paid. Tidal for example is a guess, with some 1.3 million new subscribers (supposedly) after Beyonce's new 3 yr exclusive. Let's say they go at some point leaving maybe 3 mil paid. It is obvious the masses do not give a crap about lossless. I'll peg the high Apple numbers to folks with $1000 to buy an iPhone and like being locked into an ecosystem.

Spotfy may never offer lossless (not sure if it has anything to do with cost of it, other than bandwidth, they still pay their lowly sum regardless, I think), because their users do not care. Yet they may if everyone else is and they see a decline in subs.

Heck Deezer, Tencent and Pandora have more paid subs than Tidal or Quobuz.

 

Still lingering around, but seems new stuff is coming without it.

Some Tidal Max files are showing as 24/48 Hi-Res, with some DACs playing it still as MQA.