Tidal vs. Spotify

I've been a Spotify user for about a year now, runs great, never goes down, no issues. I was hesitant to pay $20 for Tidal, but finally went for it. After 2 weeks, I've cancelled Tidal. I'm using the Tidal app on a computer with plenty of power and ram, on a broadband ethernet connection, and it's just one hang-up after another, one "invalid track" error after another. Closing and re-starting doesn't help. I've had almost as many days that I couldn't enjoy it as days that I could. Granted, the sound quality is superb, but the promise of great sound quality doesn't help when all you're getting is silence and "invalid track" errors on every album I pull up. If they get their act together, I'll sign back up, but at this point it feels like I'm paying to be a beta tester.

Cerrot, I'm pretty sure that my bandwidth isn't the cause of "invalid track" errors. For example, I'll click on an album, and instead of playing the song (and the song isn't greyed-out indicating that it's not available), it gives an "Invalid Track" message at the top of the screen. The software then begins to scroll through the album, song by song, first slowly then quickly, trying to find anything it can play. If I don't stop it, it'll scroll through every song, every album, by an artist, looking for anything to play. Clicking another artist, whose albums I've played previously, will start the scrolling over again. Closing and restarting doesn't help. This seems like software error, not bandwidth drop-out.

Late reply, but Cerrot I am using the downloaded app. The issues I've had have occurred while using the app, not a browser. It's run fine off and on the last few days, only had to restart a couple of times.

It absolutely does sound better than Spotify, though I prefer Spotify's interface and access to various playlists. Just seems like more content on Spotify...not just in absolute terms, but more different ways to find new content. But the sound quality has Spotify beat.

I can see a lot of reasons why Spotify users haven't migrated.

Do this, just for one example...pretend you want to explore the decade of the 1970s and put "70s" in the search box of Tidal, and then do the same in Spotify. If you put "70s" in the Spotify search box you get lots of playlists with great 70s music, whether you want disco, glam rock, AM radio hits, etc. That same search on Tidal gets you around 5 or 6 limited playlists of actual songs by their original artists. The rest are made up of tribute-band songs...great hits done by someone nobody has ever heard of. That's just one example. Go ahead and try it...the 3rd playlist shown is not of original artists, the 4th isn't even 70s songs. One of the lists is "Woman of Rock", including Alanis Morisette...had she even hit puberty by the end of the '70s?

I'm sure once their library gets bigger, and they hire someone who was alive in the 1970s to make sure their '70s playlists don't have Alanis Morisette on them, they'll hit their stride and you'll see people flock there in droves. I just don't think they're there yet.

You're absolutely wrong Cerrot, I stand by my previous message. Those 4-5 playlists aren't hundreds of songs long, they're 35-45 songs long. And if you do a search under Elton John, as you suggest, the results return exactly 4 playlists that have anything to do with the 1970s. Just did it myself, looking at it onscreen right now.

If you do a search under Mama Cass, again as you suggest, you get exactly 3 playlists...2 of which are for songs from 2015, and one which has over 400 songs but any connection to the 1970s is purely random - it includes songs from Benny Goodman and Bruno Mars. Bruno Mars wasn't even alive in the 1970s. Go ahead, try it yourself, you'll see what I'm seeing. Did you actually do any of the searches you suggest, before typing your last message?

I'm not saying Tidal is a poor service, I'm simply explaining to you why it's not head-scratching why everyone with access to an internet connection hasn't signed up. Having bitrate isn't enough, they also have to have the library AND the interface and search algorithms to access it. Some days, I've worked so hard my brain is fried, I don't know who I want to listen to, I want to sort of just listen to random radio from a particular time period and maybe re-discover songs I'd forgotten about. We're talking about decade-related playlists...I'm not asking it to make up a playlist of artists who enjoy playing Scrabble on weekends while wearing rasberry berets. A decade-playlist isn't rocket science.

Seriously Cymbop, you never sit down to listen and think to yourself, "I'd like to revisit a particular time period and discover songs I may have missed"? Or maybe hear songs from only a particular era, but want them randomly chosen because you're mentally focused on other tasks and just want to be surprised? That has never happened to you?

I do that all the time. Other people must, or you wouldn't have Time/Life doing all those infomercials selling bundles of 800 CDs filled with 46,000 songs from the '60s/70s/etc. I think there's a lot of interest in playlists that capture particular time periods in music history.