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(Pocket-lint) – Tidal is a digital music streaming service that gives you access to over 80 million songs and 350,000 videos from music artists around the world, similar to Spotify and Apple Music.
Tidal has always been about righting wrongs in the music industry and ensuring artists are paid directly and fully for their art. In return, you get music that exceeds CD quality and hopefully a warm feeling in your stomach at the thought of paying for HD tracks.
Tidal offers an unprecedented level of insight into how its subscribers directly support artists. It promises to provide 10% of a monthly HiFi Plus subscription directly to your most listened to artist.
Additionally, Tidal HiFi Plus subscribers can also see how their cumulative streams add up to artist earnings in their activity stream.
Tidal emphasizes audio quality and offers three subscription tiers giving you access to lossless FLAC and even Master-quality audio at 9216 Kbps on the HiFi Plus plan. This is something not yet offered by Spotify, although it has been announced that Spotify HiFi is expected to launch in 2021.
To help you decide if Tidal is worth your money and time, especially against the competition, we’ve covered how Tidal works and what supposedly makes it better.
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How does Tidal work?
Tidal offers a free tier in the US, but has yet to launch in the UK. There’s always a 30-day free trial for new subscribers, so it’s pretty easy to give it a try and see if it’s the platform for you. The Tidal app works with over 95 platforms, including Android, iOS and desktop computers, as well as some cars and HiFi equipment.
When you first launch the app, the service gives you a very intuitive way to select the artists you like and with each one you select, more artists appear. It’s a very smooth experience and only takes a few minutes.
Tidal then uses this data to curate playlists and suggest songs and artists you might enjoy, right off the bat. Of course, you can also search for old-school music. Tidal lets you save your favorite playlists, albums, and tracks, as well as download them for offline listening.
How much does Tidal cost?
You can see how much Tidal costs here. There are two plans available, called HiFi and HiFi Plus.
Hifi stereo
The HiFi plan offers CD quality sound up to 1411 Kbps. It also gives you access to Tidal Connect, offline listening and is, of course, ad-free. The HiFi package costs $/£9.99 per month.
Hi-Fi More
HiFi Plus gives you everything HiFi offers, plus access to Master Quality Audio recordings and innovative spatial formats like Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 reality audio. Plus, it will donate 10% of your subscription to your most listened to artist and let you track how your listening habits are funding your favorite artists. HiFi plus costs $/£19.99 per month.
Rival service Spotify, only offers 320 Kbps playback with its $9.99 subscription and has yet to launch a HiFi offering. Comparatively, Amazon Music Unlimited also offers High Definition and Spatial Audio listening, but with a smaller library and no MQA options. Amazon’s service is priced at $12.99 (£7.99) for Prime members and $14.99 (£9.99) for non-members.
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Which devices support Tidal?
Music service Tidal offers a wide range of media on third-party audio systems, such as Sonos and Denon Home. Tidal can be added as a streaming music source in dedicated apps for these systems, ensuring audiophiles get the best possible codecs through their speakers.
Tidal also has a feature similar to Chromecast and AirPlay, called Tidal Connect. Using the Tidal app as a controller, you can select the supported speakers for playback and it will send the highest quality stream possible, whether it’s FLAC, main audio or even from Sony 360 Reality Audio and Dolby Atmos.
A full list of nearly 100 supported devices can be found here.
Where is Tidal available?
Tidal is currently available in 61 countries and plans to continue to increase that number. Most of Europe, North and South America, and Australia are covered, but if you want to see the full list, you can find it here.
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How do you navigate Tidal?
Once you’ve downloaded the Tidal app and signed up, you’ll go through a customization process, which will ask you to select artists you like. After going through the simple process, you will find yourself on the home screen. Here, you’ll be presented with a selection of music that Tidal thinks you’ll enjoy based on your previous selections, and after using the app for a while, based on your listening habits as well.
There’s a menu bar at the bottom of the screen for navigating (on the mobile app) to different sections of Tidal. There are five screen tabs in the menu bar:
Homepage : this page is full of music suggestions that Tidal thinks you’ll like, in the form of playlists, radio stations, new tracks, and charts.
Videos: presents you with curated videos from Tidal’s network along with video playlists tailored to your tastes. You can also access album experiences here, which are basically director’s comments, but for albums. There are even a few feature films here, mostly music documentaries.
Explore: the Explore tab allows you to search for a specific song, artist or genre. It also lets you browse music suitable for moods, activities, events and more.
My activity : List of your top artist and what you contribute to that artist through your HiFi Plus subscription.
My collection : each time you add a song, album, video or playlist to your favourites, it is added to your collection under Mixes, Playlists, Artists, Albums or Tracks. You can also find your uploaded tracks and recent activity here, as well as access to settings.
These sections are usually also reflected in the desktop app, based on a left menu.
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There are a few more buttons to pay attention to. The first tells you the quality of the stream. It will normally say “Normal” or “Master” (depending on your subscription), but click on it and you can change the quality. The mobile app also offers options to change the quality of Wi-Fi and cellular data – to avoid being hit with a huge streaming bill.
The second interesting button is the output used by Tidal. This is a speaker icon and on a desktop device will allow you to select from the outputs you have available on your system – this may include your PC speakers, an external DAC or various headphone jacks . It also includes the cast to be sent to a Google Cast-enabled device – this option is also found in the mobile app.
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How do you change or cancel your Tidal subscription?
If you decide to upgrade or no longer want to be a Tidal subscriber, the process is pretty straightforward.
In your browser:
Log in to my.TIDAL.com.
Click Subscription.
Select Upgrade, Downgrade, or Cancel.
Confirm your selection.
In the Tidal app:
Click My Collection, Settings, Edit Profile, then Manage Subscription.
Click Subscription.
Select Upgrade, Downgrade, or Cancel.
Confirm your selection.
If you use Apple Pay:
Go to settings.
Click Apple ID.
Click Subscriptions.
Confirm your selection.
Are there alternatives?
Alternatives include: Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, Deezer and Apple Music. Each of these services not only lets you stream music, but also download and listen offline.
None of the competing services offer such insight into how your subscription helps the artists you love, so if that’s high on your agenda, Tidal is a very compelling choice. It must be said that neither offers the same audio fidelity as the Master recordings from Tidal, Amazon Music Unlimited and Deezer come close, however.
You can learn more about all of these services by checking out the following Pocket-lint summaries:
