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

I have been using Spotify since 2020, but I wanted better sound quality and a more simple and better ui without podcasts too.

I switched to Apple Music for a month.

• It has some problems like wrong album dates after adding to library

• Slower and buggier experience

• I don’t like the windows app too which is slow (iTunes/Apple Music beta app).

• Removing albums deletes all the songs from library too.

I tried Tidal too at the same time. Currently have the Hi Fi plus trial of Tidal.

• Windows app is way better than AM, but iOS app isn’t, and in iPhone, the sound quality is better and louder with Apple Music

• Some less known artists are shown wrong like albums from wrong years or duplicates of same artists names

• There are too many versions of the same album (max, normal, and more)

• Tidal Apple Watch app isn’t available for me as a home screen shortcut like Apple Music and Spotify which is strange

• Tidal doesn’t have wrapped year playlist and Shazam app sync. (Instead it has monthly wrapped, and I have to add manually the songs from Shazam to a Tidal playlist I created)

I use iPhone 14 Pro with AirPods Pro & Windows Gaming PC with Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro and Yamaha AG06 Mixer. (If needed I can get a better amp/dac).

Which one should I choose, then?

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).

Hey everyone,

I am an avid music listener on all my devices and I've been using several different music streaming services over the years to try them all and see which one was the most suitable for me. I was always bouncing between Spotify and Apple Music, and wanted to try out Tidal because of friends' recommendations. I took the free trial month at the end of January, used it for multiple occasions (home, commute, travel...) and here is my review.

Pros:

Starting with the good things, I loved how central the music is! This may seem stupid but Tidal really puts the emphasis on the music service first rather than pushing podcasts or certain artists blindly. This can be seen in the 'clickable' names throughout the interface to see music producers, composer, sound engineer... for EVERY track, how cool is that? I also loved the overall premiumness of the interface, the Tidal built-in playlists are well-organised and easy to navigate. As for songs recommendations, I actually liked them most of the time! One month is short for a service to refine my profile but overall I actually discovered new songs or rediscovered artists who were "lost" in my Spotify/AM daily listening habits.

Sound quality was the biggest hope I had before installing Tidal and I wasn't disappointed. I listened to it through multiple sources, either on wired headphones or speakers (B&W P7 and Edifier) to test the lossless Hifi quality or most often in normal mode on Bluetooth devices (car, Sony WH-1000XM4, AirPods...) and it sounded as good as AM and better than Spotify which does not offer any lossless mode at the moment. I also loved that Tidal took the time to develop quality apps for most of my devices, including standalone iPad and Apple Watch apps which are not merely replicating the iPhone app design.

Pricing was finally quite competitive, especially when compared to the increased prices of AM/Spotify over the last months. For students like myself, Tidal with Hifi quality comes at €4.99/month in Western Europe which is a very enticing offer!

Cons (I'll be more structured here with a bullet point list):

• Search is just BAD. I read before trying Tidal that its search was sometimes imprecise and could lead to unwanted results. I was used to bad search of AM compared to the overall excellent one of Spotify (which works with filters too!) but Tidal is another level below that. Example with the latest song of the British band Depeche Mode: type "Ghost Again" and not "Ghosts Again" with the -s and Tidal won't return you the song, like WHY? It was also a pain in the arse for me to find an artist whose name I misspelled and I had to open Google or Spotify to find the correct one! It is especially irritating in situations where you have little control on your screen like in the car.

• App stability is disappointed. Many times, I ran into the issue of a buggy iOS app when it said it did not have any connection (I had to restart it) or when I started a track and it froze the screen without any reason. AM can also be buggy and Spotify is generally the most stable in that field but Tidal app feels buggy and "sluggish" at certain times.- Library management suffers from the same issue as Spotify. I sometimes read music services can fall either in the playlist-oriented or album-oriented camp. Although Tidal is better than Spotify for that, it just doesn't leave me with the impression I was managing my music library like I do with AM. I am much more an album-oriented person (hence my conclusion below) and missed the smart playlists, the beautiful album grid...

• Tidal lack of popularity can be problematic. This point has different consequences and I'm not talking about the lack of marketing around it (at least in Europe) although this could be a problem for the financial people running the service. Tidal is stuck between two sides, the utterly well-known Spotify which is the most popular among my friends and has many social features (playlist collaboration, availability everywhere, public playlists choice...) and AM which offers a great sound quality (and Dolby Atmos), human-curated playlists, radios and more fine-grained control over your music library. AM is also, just like Spotify, available on many more devices than Tidal. I miss the TV (LG OS) and Playstation apps for instance.

• Personal music management is inferior to AM. Like Spotify, there is no good way to manage local files and merge them with the streaming library. It's one of the main strengths of AM and it does it so smoothly.

Overall, I liked my experience on Tidal but did not find enough pros to counterbalance its cons. The main ones being the fuzzy search and the app stability. For my own use and having mainly Apple devices, AM has a better value proposition with a similar premium sound quality,is available on more devices, a better library management and also more financial value with a student price of €5.99/month which includes the TV video service. Someone looking for better social features could also be disappointed by Tidal and prefer Spotify.

Thanks for your time!

Trying to understand the differences between the three big-name sources: Spotify Very High vs Tidal High vs Apple Music Hi-Res Lossless. Picked the top three streaming services.

Can someone help me understand how each one of these differ from each other? They use different audio formats like Ogg/Vorbis, AAC, and FLAC. What are downsides and upsides to each of them? What is considered the "highest"

Note: not comparing with Tidal's HiFi Plus. not sure if people would suggest bringing that up for comparison

Is Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) the highest quality available on Apple Music, or does it offer raw audio like Tidal, up to 192? I’m not sure how Apple Music operates in terms of audio quality. I’m currently a Tidal subscriber and use IEMs.

Hello everyone. I have Spotify and i'm willing to chance to Tidal. Is the Quality of sound better? I do see when i play songs "low" / "high" / MAX.

Hi, I have been streaming same tracks on Tidal and Spotify since today and it's looking like Spotify is sounding a little bit better than Tidal. Is it my ears or is there something I am missing? Anyone experiencing same?

I currently use Apple Music (I switched from Spotify to Apple Music about two months ago), and I love the better sound quality, but I want the best sound quality from a streaming service. I also use my Xm4s as headphones, and I know that there is 360 degree audio, which I would love to try with tidal What are the pros and cons of Tidal? Is the switchover from AM to Tidal easy? Thanks for all help!

Edit: I ended up switching to Tidal, but after a few months I switched back to AM. The UI being terrible really annoyed me, and the lack of being able to import your own files was a drawback, because I love listening to unreleased songs from some artists. They also got rid of a lot of features I used. Connectivity with Samsung TV was frustrating, plus they got rid of Sony 360 degree audio, which whilst not the end of the world in any regard, was indicative of my worry they may get rid of more features in the future.

I‘m a longtime Spotify user and looking for a new home. Been testing different services for the past months and tidal and Apple Music are the last ones standing. The thing is, I recently switched to an iPhone and Apple Music is really well integrated into the phone. The thing is, tidals recommendations are better and I like the song radio and personal mixes better, but there are lots of duplicate name artists and best of albums/covers/compilations. On the other hand, apple has really good curated playlists. I listen mostly over bluetooth (I know, sound quality is overkill in both services), or iems with a dac. I also have google nest speakers, which don’t really work with iPhones, but tidal.

So my question is, what are things on Apple Music you like (or Tidal, if anyone has experience with it), which I might be missing? (Also posted this on the tidal subreddit)

I‘m a longtime Spotify user and looking for a new home. Been testing different services for the past months and tidal and Apple Music are the last ones standing. The thing is, I recently switched to an iPhone and Apple Music is really well integrated into the phone. The thing is, tidals recommendations are better and I like the song radio and personal mixes better. On the other hand, apple has really good curated playlists. I listen mostly over bluetooth (I know, sound quality is overkill in both services), or iems with a dac. I also have google nest speakers, which don’t really work with iPhones, but tidal.

So my question is, what are things on tidal you like (or apple if anyone has experience with it), which I might be missing?

Alright guys I have started a few threads now describing that I'm new to Tidal and still in the comparison stage to Spotify which I'll always keep as here in New Zealand it's essentially free if you have a mobile phone and plan. I'm still on the fence so i thought this thread would be about you describing your experience and why you prefer Tidal to the likes of Spotify. If you guys could list a song or a number of songs you have compared between both services and found Tidal to be noticable better and then if you could also describe the differences you notice that would be very helpful.

I'll go first with one track that I heard last night that kind of blew me away and that was the song: At last by Etta James. Both the same album so same version, on Tidal being master quality and Spotify regular however the sound difference was quite large. Much more difference than other masters on Tidal vs Spotify. The orchestra on Tidal was fuller sounding, her vocals sounded so much more rich and had more energy. It was definitely something that shocked me so I'm curious as to your guys experience?

Which one is best for audio quality?

I used to use Spotify until around April this year when I thought I'd give Tidal a try with their free trial on the Hifi+ tier subscription and I haven't looked back. It may cost twice as much as Spotify but the quality is second to none so I'm just curious what you guys prefer using to stream music.

Last week I subscribed to Tidal so I can explore more streaming options. Currently i have a yamaha a s501 amp and a pair of cerwin vega sl8.

Apple music was my way to go for the last year and I can say that it was pretty good, losless did the job.

After using Tidal for a week, I can definitely say that Apple seems to be more dynamic louder, but Tidal is I think warmer and has somehow more details. Now if I listen to Apple music, I feel like its way more distorted.

Did anyone also noticed these things? Am I doing something wrong?

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.

After being a longtime Spotify user, I switched to Tidal. Something about Tidal is not meshing with me and so I’m using it side by side with Apple. The ability to find playlists with Apple is really winning me over. The discovery feature with Tidal hasn’t started really helped me discover new music. It’s usually songs I already know. Good thing is they change everyday.

For those who have used both, what are the pros and cons of both.