I can't forgive Tidal for their promotion of MQA, nothing more than a scam to fleece audiophiles who don't know better out of their money.

MQA isn't lossless and distorts audio: https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc

Tidal HiFi isn't lossless either: https://goldensound.audio/2021/11/29/tidal-hifi-is-not-lossl...

I don't think any of the streaming services are particularly friendly to artists either, but Apple Music pays more to the artist than Spotify does, and includes (real) lossless audio at no extra cost. For now, they've got my dollar.

> The UI is on par with Spotify.

Is there such a thing as hi-fi podcasts they are pushing on you? Or do you mean they are really trying to make you hear the Best Hi-fi 2022 playlist by some random? No, they must have some kind of official podcast to push, I'm sure..

I'm not sure what you mean? They've always been known for a focus on higher fidelity audio, and podcasts weren't really brought up.

Apple Music is a better choice than Tidal and far better than Spotify.

They offer $0.010/stream versus $0.003-$0.005 for Spotify and $0.013 for Tidal.

Also offers the best quality audio with lossless up to 24-bit/192Hz without using MQA.

> Apple Music is a better choice than Tidal and far better than Spotify.

Only if you're on an iPhone.

It has 100m downloads on Android and 4.0 rating.

Versus a 4.1 rating for Tidal.

Having tried Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, Amazon, Tidal, Soundcloud, and Qobuz, I can tell you that Apple Music doesn't have the best UI or features. It's a nice service, don't get me wrong. Top 3 for sure.

Also, the ratings on the Play Store aren't the best indicator of a great app. On the front page of Apple Music there's a 5 star review saying how Chromecast doesn't work. Which is why I prefer to just try all the apps myself.

You can't be sure what they're paying. For Apple I've seen $0.0056, $0.01, $0.008, and $0.006. The only consistency is that Napster, Tidal, and Amazon Unlimited (Not Prime) are always among the top payers and Spotify at the bottom in the West.

P.S.: Qobuz might be the best one, paying $0.04, on par with Peloton, while being cheaper than Tidal.

what genres do you listen to, and have you ever been unable to find something you were looking for?

As in that bad? Besides they haven’t been able to figure Apple Login out. In recent many months they’re the only ones where Apple Login just doesn’t work.

At least Apple login is an option.

Last time I used Tidal there was no Google login which I found ludicrous in a modern service.

I have a somewhat biased opinion since I work in ML close to people building recommender systems at Netflix, but I think Tidal is a great showcase of the pros and cons of algorithmically curated content VS human curated. Tidal playlists are mostly human-curated and excellent. However it does not scale: it does not cover the long tail of wide ranges and nuances of musical preferences, nor does it cover such preferences over a large range of time. Their recommendation engine is orders of magnitude worse than Spotify's one. On the other hand, I also find that Spotify sometimes pushes algorithmic curation too far: one example of that is when they used to force an algorithmically-driven order of songs when playing an album instead of a linear order (until Adele complained loudly). I think there's a balance here: Spotify could benefit from some human-curated playlists that don't only cover mainstream genres, but Tidal should definitely invest into their recommendation engine which is really subpar, especially so because a much smaller user-base makes this problem harder to solve well.

I love that Tidal has folders to better organize playlists. Spotify doesn't. So to me, in some ways, Tidal is much better.

Spotify has folders. I have been using them for years:

https://support.spotify.com/us/article/playlist-folders/

Good to know, thanks.

> they focus on hi-fi audio

IIRC high quality on Spotify is Vorbis at 320kbps. If you can tell the difference between that and lossless, I'm impressed.

On normal headphones probably not.

But with a decent DAC/Amplifier it's very easy to hear the benefits of lossless especially with well mastered sources at higher qualities e.g. 24-bit/192kHz.

One thing I really liked about Tidal was how detailed the credits for the albums are. It's very useful for Jazz fans in particular I think to look at who was a sideman on an album and who else they played with.

Same here. The sound quality difference is kind of astonishing. I wasn't expecting there to be any difference, but it's so noticable that one must wonder what Spotify is doing to "round out" their sound so much.