Nowadays, you would rarely see someone who does not wear headphones! Music has become an escape to most people from the chaotic, busy world. Having good music streaming app on your phone is necessary for such a situation. Your app store is full of music streaming apps, and sometimes you just wonder for hours which app to install! The biggest struggle is between Tidal Vs Spotify!
When you consider any music streaming app, they all have kind of similar attributes. Spotify and Tidal also the same, and the only difference are what each app prioritizes. Spotify prioritizes social features and personalized algorithms, while Tidal prioritizes sound quality and artists.
To get a better idea, you may also read Spotify vs Apple Music: Which is better for you?
Let us see how these two apps have differently adopted all music streaming apps’ common features. – Tidal Vs Spotify
Tidal vs Spotify Music discovery
Like any music streaming app, both Tidal and Spotify offer several music discovery features. Users can browse music by genre, mood, activity, and many more. Additionally, they both offer access to a radio feature. Tidal and Spotify both use algorithms to learn your music preferences and recommend songs.
Well, then how do they differ? It is the ways in which they present you with the recommendations.
Tidal creates a maximum of eight playlists that focus on eight different genres that you often listen to. The Tidal app saves it on “My Mix”. If you only listen to four genres regularly, Tidal would only give you three playlists. This list updates gradually, compared to Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. If you like the “My Mix” you are listening to today, you can save it as a separate playlist that will not lose in the future when the mix updates.
Spotify’s algorithms create a few different playlists instead.
- “Daily Mix”- Combine music you have been listening to recently and similar songs.
- “Discover Weekly” playlist – Recommend songs from your most listened to genres and artists.
- Weekly “Release Radar” playlist – Recommend newly released music up to six “Daily Mix” playlists from all the artists you follow on Spotify.
- Special static playlists like “Your Time Capsule.” – Used recent listening history to create a playlist of music you would likely have listened to as a teenager.
Spotify has a “Charts” tab to organizes the top songs all over the world categorized by country. These playlists indicate if the song is new, uptrending, or downtrending.
Tidal has charts playlists too, but fewer of them are compared to Spotify. Moreover, Tidal has “Tidal Rising” to discover artists rising in popularity. Tidal Rising is an effective way to discover new artists.
Tidal vs Spotify Music Library
- Music catalogue
Tidal offers over 60 million tracks while Spotify has about 50 million; clearly, both have a considerable amount of music. Some artists prefer to release exclusive music only to Tidal, so it has more contents.
Spotify accepts music submitted either by a third-party distributor or the original artist. Tidal, however, accepts music only through a select few music distributors. If you listen to mainstream artists, Tidal will not be a problem. But if you prefer niche music, just go with Spotify.
- Podcast and Videos.
Tidal always focuses on musical artists; therefore, it does not offer many podcasts. But Spotify has access to a comprehensive library of podcasts, as well as playback features.
Tidal offers over 250,000 videos, including music videos, filmed live performances, movies, documentaries etc.; the majority is exclusive to Tidal users. But Spotify does not have videos but short GIFs displayed on the player screen during the song.
- Exclusive contents
Tidal’s streaming is dedicated to artists. It pays $0.00927 to the artist per stream when Spotify pays only $0.00331. Tidal also have in-depth credit pages for contributed artists.
Tidal also offers exclusive artist content to its members via Tidal X. Eg: – Exclusive access to live streams, live shows, meet and greets concert tickets.
Other than recommending new artists to users, Tidal Rising select rising artists with potential and offer them free support. Artists get professional photoshoots, their music on the front page of Tidal, Tour Support, and more.
Spotify has some similar features, such as artist playlists, Concerts tabs, and Spotify’s studios. Artists can create their accounts and use these features.
Streaming quality – Tidal Vs Spotify – There are things to consider!
If you are a fan of high-quality HiFi audio, go for Tidal. Tidal’s HiFi membership offers four streaming quality options: Normal, High, HiFi, and Master Quality Authenticated. The Normal setting limits the amount of Internet data usage because high-quality streaming files take up a lot of data. The High setting offers 320kbps and uses AAC files. Well, The HiFi setting offers 44.1kHz/16bit CD-quality lossless FLAC files!
Spotify also has few audio quality settings, but its maximum streaming quality is 320kbps over AAC files, matching only with Tidal’s High setting.
Tidal vs Spotify Pricing
Tidal offers two tiers for subscriptions. Both have a 30-day free trial, and subscriptions allow up to six accounts.
- Tidal Premium
- Cheap
- Offers maximum 320kbps audio quality via AAC.
- Access to exclusive music, videos, events, and editorial playlists.
- Tidal HiFi
– Expensive.
– Lossless, high bitrate audio files.
– Sony 360 Reality Audio, Dolby Atmos Music.
– Everything Tidal Premium offers.
Tidal also gives a free plan called Tidal Access. But it only allows access to live video channels and a few selected radios.
Spotify’s Premium pricing is cheaper than Tidal, and there is a free version too! Spotify too has a 30-day free trial for Spotify Premium.
Tidal vs Spotify Social features
If you are a social butterfly, always go with Spotify! Spotify desktop app has a Friend Activity section to see the songs your friends are actively listening to. You can link your Spotify account with Facebook, Instagram and Tinder. Also, you can always disable the feature that publishes your activity. You can save your friends’ playlists to your library and create collaborative playlists where several friends can add and remove songs.
As for Tidal, the only social feature is that you can share a song from the Tidal app to your social media profiles.
Make Sure to Consider the Extra features before going ahead! – Tidal Vs Spotify
- Spotify Wrapped shows your end-of-year statistics but no such feature in Tidal.
- Spotify allows you to play local files. But Tidal only allows you to transfer your music library from a different music platform into it. Both of these Apps allow downloading files to listen offline, though.
- Both Tidal and Spotify are compatible with Apple Carplay and Android Auto if your car has that functionality. Spotify can integrate with Google Maps and Waze, while Tidal can only integrate with Waze from within the navigation app.
Well, all in all, both streaming services are popular for good reasons. You should look into the features and decide what fits your preferences best.
