Tidal recommendations work slightly different to Spotify. You won’t find the same level of intrusive recommendations with tidal, they are more subtle in the sense that occasionally you will see sections appear like “because you listened to” and “stations” based on. My personal favourite for discovering is the daily discovery that appears towards the top of your home page. Be warned though, tidal throws all types of commercial recommendations at you on your Home Screen like popular artists, trending, rising etc. you can’t remove them and they have no relevance to your listening history. Good luck Answer from ogerloaf on reddit.com
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/tidal › should i switch from spotify premium to tidal?
r/TIdaL on Reddit: Should I switch from Spotify premium to tidal?
July 21, 2023 -

I know you get cd level sound quality but I’ve heard the app is quite glitchy, also Spotifys recommendations are what have formed about 90% of my music taste so idk if tidals recommendations are as good. Can someone help me decide?

Update: I got the tidal free trial to try it out and while the quality was slightly better, I soon realised that there was no (free) way to transfer my (multiple) playlists with over 700 tracks, so looks like I’ll be staying with Spotify for now. Thanks for all the replies

UPDATE UPDATE: Bro wth it’s been like ten minutes I went back to Spotify and it’s literally unlistenable now what is this sorcery. Tidal it is. Just a little quieter than Spotify is all

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/tidal › tidal or spotify?
r/TIdaL on Reddit: Tidal or Spotify?
August 28, 2024 -

About a year ago I changed to Tidal, from Spotify, but I still use Spotify for podcasts. The primary reason as to why I switched to Tidal is the bitrate (I went for their at the time HiFi 1XXX bitrate subscribtion as a student). I had just gotten my Sony WH-1000XM5 at the time, but I often find myself wondering why in the world Tidal does not have certain songs, altough their libary is huge I've never had this problem with Spotify before. So my question is whether or not Tidal is actually better in terms of audio quality when listening though Sony WH-1000XM5, or the Sony Linkbuds-S

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/tidal › spotify vs tidal -- help?
r/TIdaL on Reddit: Spotify vs Tidal -- help?
January 10, 2025 -

i just started tidal's free 1 month trial because I've been getting so tired of spotify's bull over the past few years. (the increased focus on AI, this year's awful wrapped, all the typical corporate stuff, premium getting more expensive every year, etc)

I can't really find any good pros other than it's not spotify. with tidal, as far as I know, you can't change your playlist covers, you can't add a pfp unless you have one of 3 apps I don't ever intend on getting, the mechanism of adding songs to playlists is more time consuming than it should be, etc.

i REALLY want to like this app. i'm looking for good music apps other than spotify or apple music, but I keep running into things on tidal that would be a downgrade from spotify. if i'm paying about the same each month, it's gotta be better overall.

are there any features tidal offers that set it apart from and above spotify? if so, what are they?

Edit: for context, I don't have any quality sound systems -- my crappy bluetooth earbuds recently broke so i've been stuck with wired, my car's sound system is abysmal, and I don't have headphones. good quality sound is REALLY nice, but I don't currently have access to a way to benefit from that feature.

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Here is a long list of reasons why I like Tidal: Tidal has a much cleaner, less cluttered UI. I can easily find what I'm looking for in a few clicks. Spotify limits my library to a measly sidebar, whereas Tidal makes it navigable as an entire page. The homepage shows me things in a logical order, like having my recently played up at the top, then my mixes, then my most played. Rather than random recommended playlists at the top, then mixes, THEN recents. Artists discographies are organized into separate studio albums, singles & EPs, live albums, and compilation categories. Not just section headers under one discography banner. Spotify is also extremely annoying as the albums are initially organized by popularity and not release date by default. Tidal's track radio and mixes are great and are my main way of listening to music if I'm not listening to a full album. Their recommendation algorithm is in my opinion much better than Spotify. This goes for both songs and albums. They have Daily Discovery and New Arrivals playlists that are great. Tidal gives me 8 daily mixes to choose from, while Spotify only gives me 6. Tidal isn't polluted with AI generated music and playlists (see Spotify's "Perfect Fit Content" program), audiobooks, podcasts, concert reminders, or merchandise. One of Tidal's best features is the "recommended albums." If you're looking at an album page, you will get recommendations of up to ~40 albums that are similar to what you're looking at. Tidal also has artist credits on a lot of songs, so you can find out who played on what and discover music that way (this is also supplemented by the "appears on" section of artists' pages). Another great aspect of Tidal is the sharing function. You can share a Tidal link (album or song) with anyone regardless of what streaming platform they use, and they'll be able to open it in the app of their choice. No having to search for the song! Tidal support has generally been great. I've submitted many tickets to resolve incorrect artist attributions and errors on the app, and they are pretty quick to respond to these issues. Yes, Tidal isn't quite as much of a "social" app as Spotify. The things with playlist images and profile pics are annoying, but in the end, those shouldn't affect your listening experience. Also, to address your point on adding songs to playlists: Adding songs to playlists also is very easy! It's the same amount of steps as it would be on Spotify. Right click the song -> add to playlist -> choose playlist. You are also saving a dollar a month with Tidal and they pay the artist more than double per stream than Spotify. Tidal is a much more pleasant experience and it feels like it's run by people who actually care about music and not just profit. I hope you enjoy your trial and that my comment and your experience convince you to make the switch.
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You can add profile photos? I just listen to the music 😂
Find elsewhere
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/audiophile › tidal vs spotify: my first impression
r/audiophile on Reddit: tidal vs spotify: my first impression
December 1, 2023 -

today i finally made the decision to retire my spotify account and create a tidal account. Here’s a few reasons why:

  1. i go to an audio engineering school and even our professors suggest it to us

  2. feels like spotify is starting to pull a “netflix” move by constantly increasing the price of a subscription a little bit every month, but not necessarily offering anything new or better

  3. how many of us just have our spotify because we had it since middle school? me too. i keep getting recommended the same shit every day and it genuinely has me feeling like i’ve listened to everything when i know that’s not the case. i used to really like their layout but now the only way i can hear something new is by listening to other peoples playlists.

  4. spotify is just incompatible with way too many things. seems like apple just has the most flexibility overall when it comes to 3rd party programs.

  5. no 360 audio no dolby atmos? wonder how much they’ll charge when they introduce that.

  6. songs just become unavailable at points and then become available again, fake pages constantly leaking. artists randomly taking down their work which i kinda understand

—— overall, i just want to feel like i’m getting more for my money- and not JUST spending more. So i got tidal today. I used Soundiiz to convert my playlists and here are my first impressions:

  1. i notice a change in sound quality that i actually like, at least for the music i regularly listen to. it’s subtle. this alone isn’t enough for me to prefer Tidal yet but i can definitely see it changing.

  2. it bugs me that they are not compatible with Roku. from what i read there WAS a Tidal app on Roku that has since been taken down for whatever reason. Even pairing my phone to my roku and playing music from my phone caused some weird glitch where certain songs just wouldn’t play. The playhead moved but there was silence.

  3. there are quite a few songs that Tidal just doesn’t have access to. this bothered me cause they claim to have over 100mil songs which is about the same as spotify.

  4. their layout it something i have to get used to. it’s sleek but like it doesn’t feel fun. i don’t have enough data stored on their to know whether it’s as personal as spotify can be. I like that their layout shows music videos too.

I’ll come back and update when I have more to say. But for now let me know what you think. What are you streaming on? What would you suggest to me?

EDIT: just realized that you’re not able to pair to devices on a local network with Tidal. this definitely could form my opinion differently. i can’t listen to tidal on any device without pairing to my phone which gets annoying when certain apps turn off your music or just play right over your shit. idk gang spotify up 65%

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/audiophile › spotify vs. apple music vs. tidal
r/audiophile on Reddit: Spotify vs. Apple Music vs. Tidal
February 4, 2025 -

I’ve used Spotify forever but since joining this sub and others like it I’ve read a lot about how Apple Music and Tidal have way higher audio quality. I don’t have a fancy setup at all, I use the wired earbuds that come with iPhones and have edifier bookshelf speakers at home for my vinyls. Is it worth it to switch to Apple Music or tidal with this equipment? I’d have to convince my entire family to switch to the family plans of either service so if it’s not a noticeable difference I’ll wait until I have a higher quality system and can get one of them for myself

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/headphones › i genuinely cannot hear a single difference between tidal and spotify.
r/headphones on Reddit: I genuinely cannot hear a single difference between Tidal and Spotify.
October 10, 2024 -

I've been using Spotify for years, but I figured that since I have a pretty decent setup (Fiio K5 Pro + Hifiman Sundara), I should switch to Tidal to get the maximum audio quality possible. So I signed up for a free Tidal trial and started going back and forth between Tidal and Spotify using a bunch of songs in my library. Unfortunately, I can't seem to hear any difference between the two. With volume normalization turned off on both services, I could not make out a single instance where Tidal sounded noticeably different. The amount of bass, the clarity of the vocals, everything sounded exactly identical between the two. I tested using a bunch of tracks including Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, Time by Pink Floyd and Hotel California by The Eagles. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. Is my gear just not good enough, or is there a specific setting in Windows I need to enable? Or is there actually no audible difference?

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Years and years ago, my friend and I executed some double blind tests between lossless flac (100% accurip from CD) and lossy 320kbps mp3 transcoded from those same flac rips. We tested on his studio monitors, my studio monitors, and a few different headphones including high end dynamics and planars. We had a few DACs to pick from too, from PC soundcards to my Benchmark DAC1. It was like an all evening event to play around with the idea of doing these tests - and here's what we found: in very few songs, you could very deliberately focus your attention on cymbals and tell the difference between lossy and lossless. In most songs, and unless you were full brainpower focusing for these specific tells, you would not notice any difference. These tells were specific to the mp3 vs flac formats, and once you knew what to listen for you could identify them on all the devices we tested - but i want to emphasize again how high effort it was to notice this, and before you knew the tell you literally couldnt tell. in "sighted tests" where we knew which was lossless and which was lossy we were confident the lossless sounded better. in blind tests were we did not know which was lossless and which was lossy, we suddenly had no confidence which was which anymore, with the exception being the few songs with prominent cymbals where we knew which "tell" to watch out for. we also did a few tests of some vinyl rips that were in a flac file format with 192KHZ and 24bit resolution. If we re-encoded that same file down to 44.1KHz and 16 bit, we could not tell any difference at all. Now of course if we had a CD rip and a separately made vinyl rip, you can obviously tell them apart because the vinyl rip has some pops in it from the turntable playing it, but i'm saying if you make a "lower resolution CD quality" encode of that very same original vinyl rip, nothing audible is lost at all. THis is an important concept to understand - a 24bit 192khz or whatever "hi-res" file might be a completely different experience to listen to, but not because of the resolution. the resolution isnt responsible for the different listening experience. If the hi-res file is a vinyl rip with audible pops... that's the difference. If it's made differently in the studio to have certain differences on volumes and tones... that's the difference. but the format, the resolution, is inaudible, indistinguishable, from CD. Now, all of that said - I like lossless audio. I know i fail the blind test. I know it doesnt matter. But I also know I am a sentimental imperfect being, and when I see my player say "FLAC" or "CD Quality" it just makes me feel better, and feelings are real.
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Most people can't, so use what you like.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/spotify › spotify vs tidal vs apple music
r/spotify on Reddit: Spotify vs Tidal vs Apple Music
June 4, 2024 -

As many have heard, Spotify plan are increasing yet again. I’ve contemplated switching, but I got grandfathered into the Spotify with Hulu plan somehow and having Hulu and Spotify all for the price of one premium subscription is nice. But I’ve honestly been contemplating switching as I’ve noticed their curated mixes and DJ feature have been going down hill, and 2 price hikes in the same year is getting close to pushing me to the edge to switch.

I’ve been a Spotify premium user for years, and a tidal user for a couple years before Spotify but switched because it was giving me too many issues, but what are your guys pros/cons between Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music? Does Apple Music have these curated playlists or DJ feature? (I’m a big fan of the DJ feature but it’s slowly gone downhill and find myself using it less and less because of how bad it’s gotten).

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/tidal › finally switched from spotify to tidal
r/TIdaL on Reddit: Finally switched from Spotify to Tidal
January 16, 2025 -

I have used Spotify since 2017. I remember how simpler and easier was to use. Spotify now adds tons of features that I never use. It makes the phone and desktop app slower. Sure, I am not using the newest iPhone or newest PC, but streaming platform should be optimized for older devices. I use iPhone 13, by the way.

My breaking point was Spotify pushing artists they promote such as Sabrina Carpenter. Sure, I could have blocked her music. But, I am not that big of a hater of her music to block her. It was just annoying how I couldn't escape her songs at all. Few time was fine, but every time is bit excessive.

Another reason was useless features that I don't need. Eat the playlist (Like... what), AI Playlist maker, Smart Shuffle, previews of songs in TikTok format. Let's not forget questionable UI changes.

When I decided to switch, I tried Deezer, Youtube Music, and Apple Music. I haven't bat an eye on Amazon Music. But, the only one that I liked was Tidal. It is minimalistic and simple. I only wish I can add my own playlist cover, but that's it.. The thing I wouldn't ever say years ago is that it has better discovery features. Spotify adds same 50 songs to all my customized playlist. I am not sure what downgrade happened there, but it's noticeable.

The actual reason why I stayed on Spotify is how long I have used it, and Spotify Wrapped. This year Spotify Wrapped was so bad, that I don't think it's worth staying anymore. I have lastfm, where I can check stats whenever I want to.

Sure, Spotify has social features. But, I have no friends... So, I never had issues with that. I mean, I prefer to be private rather than my friends being able to see what exact playlist, and song I am listening to.

And lastly, Tidal still has a heart button. :)

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/tidal › is there any big disadvantages of using tidal compared to spotify?
r/TIdaL on Reddit: Is there any big disadvantages of using tidal compared to spotify?
July 12, 2025 -

I am thinking of changing from spotify after the increase in ai support and the fact that they don't support artists that well. I'm not great with change and really struggle changing anything that I'm used to but Tidal seems almost exactly like spotify but better in every way from the research I've done. It almost seems too good to be true. Is there any disadvantages to it? How quickly do new releases come on the platform? How wide a range of a discography does it have? I enjoy finding niche artists will they be on there? Are there any features spotify has that tidal doesn't that you missed (if you used it) or had to get used to when you changed?

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/tidal › just switched from spotify to tidal and man the difference in sound quality is insanee
r/TIdaL on Reddit: just switched from Spotify to Tidal and man the difference in sound quality is insanee
March 3, 2025 -

Even with my Bluetooth earbuds and compressed audio I can hear the difference, everything is less mushed together and the sound just feels so much more substantial, can't wait to try it tonight with my wired headphones

I always just stayed on Spotify for convenience sake but even that is gone now, it's just an ad plastered social media app with a maximum of 3 artists that get auto played on it.

I see a lot of complaining on this reddit so just wanted to post a positive post saying that I love the service, it's so clean and smooth

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/budgetaudiophile › spotify lossless vs tidal: sound quality only
r/BudgetAudiophile on Reddit: Spotify Lossless vs Tidal: Sound Quality Only
September 17, 2025 -

I’ve been testing Spotify’s new Lossless tier against Tidal over the last few days. This review is purely about sound quality, not the ethics, payouts, or anything else.

I listened across a mix of genres (electronic, rock, blues, jazz, indie) and carefully matched volume between the two. Honestly, they sound identical to my ears. I could not pick out any noticeable differences switching back and forth.

So if you are only considering audio quality, Spotify’s Lossless holds up just fine against Tidal. At that point it really comes down to which ecosystem or features you prefer.

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/tidal › should i switch from spotify to tidal?
r/TIdaL on Reddit: Should I switch from Spotify to Tidal?
February 2, 2025 -

I'm new to reddit, I thought I could solve my doubts here. I recently made my first HiFi setup and I was thinking of switching from Spotify to Tidal because it seemed like the best solution in terms of audio quality and interface. However, I'm noticing that the social profile is practically almost deactivated and I've read not very positive news about the platform. Should I still make this switch? Thanks and sorry if I did something wrong

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/tidal › tidal v spotify
r/TIdaL on Reddit: Tidal v Spotify
July 10, 2025 -

I recently came over from Spotify about a month ago and while I am enjoying the better quality of the streams in general. I am not digging the app compared to Spotify, it's starting to feel clunky and most of the time when you reach the end of an album the music stops where in Spotify it automatically played songs based on algorithms of previously listened to tracks.

Overall I don't hate Tidal I just feel it's not as user friendly as Spotify.

Does anyone else feel this way too?