Even if you do want to use a streaming service rather than buying music directly, Tidal pays something like 3x as much as Spotify per stream. They were also the first major streaming service to support lossless audio (11 years ago!) and the first to take a stance against AI-generated music. They label AI music, block royalties (people that upload AI music don’t get paid for it), and let users filter out all AI music.
I gave Tidal a shot this year. Lasted about 3 months before the user experience pushed me – go on and scold me – back to Spotify.
I listen to music in my car a lot which has an aftermarket Android head unit fitted. Within the first week of my trial they revamped the UI, which entailed not being able to add the currently playing song to a playlist UNLESS I leave the player view, go SEARCH the title and select it from the results. That’s something I’m definitely NOT doing while driving.
This in itself would be a dealbreaker for me if it wasn’t for Spotify’s awful business practices. So I tried to ignore it. But even then, I got nowhere close to the amount of artists and tracks that I discovered each week when on Spotify. I noticed how I listened to music less and less each day because it was either frustrating or meant listening to the same songs over and over.
I’m actually kind of embarrassed to be back on Spotify because of all the reasons mentioned in this thread (and everywhere else, obviously). But I need music to stay sane, I can’t deal with it being such a pain.
Makes sense. Tidal’s UI/UX definitely isn’t as nice.
I’m using my Plex server with Plexamp and CDs I’ve ripped. I don’t listen to a lot of newer music, so discovery isn’t as important. I use the free version of Google Play Music for discovery sometimes, but there’s a huge amount of AI slop.
I’m actually in basically the exact same situation but trying to stick to Tidal, if only just because I can’t go back to not having AI slop songs automatically hidden but I do notice how much better the recommendations are on Spotify whenever I open it again
It’s hard to scold, I think tidal is OK, but there is another… Napster! And it pays even more than tidal, like last I checked it wasn’t even close. But alas, their UX is awful. Awful enough I chose tidal for the time being. :/
From memory, Spotify is quite an outlier in terms of how bad it is. Like almost any competitor is better. People are going out of their way to choose the worst option and then virtue signalling online about it lol
Even if you do want to use a streaming service rather than buying music directly, Tidal pays something like 3x as much as Spotify per stream. They were also the first major streaming service to support lossless audio (11 years ago!) and the first to take a stance against AI-generated music. They label AI music, block royalties (people that upload AI music don’t get paid for it), and let users filter out all AI music.
I gave Tidal a shot this year. Lasted about 3 months before the user experience pushed me – go on and scold me – back to Spotify.
I listen to music in my car a lot which has an aftermarket Android head unit fitted. Within the first week of my trial they revamped the UI, which entailed not being able to add the currently playing song to a playlist UNLESS I leave the player view, go SEARCH the title and select it from the results. That’s something I’m definitely NOT doing while driving.
This in itself would be a dealbreaker for me if it wasn’t for Spotify’s awful business practices. So I tried to ignore it. But even then, I got nowhere close to the amount of artists and tracks that I discovered each week when on Spotify. I noticed how I listened to music less and less each day because it was either frustrating or meant listening to the same songs over and over.
I’m actually kind of embarrassed to be back on Spotify because of all the reasons mentioned in this thread (and everywhere else, obviously). But I need music to stay sane, I can’t deal with it being such a pain.
Makes sense. Tidal’s UI/UX definitely isn’t as nice.
I’m using my Plex server with Plexamp and CDs I’ve ripped. I don’t listen to a lot of newer music, so discovery isn’t as important. I use the free version of Google Play Music for discovery sometimes, but there’s a huge amount of AI slop.
I’m actually in basically the exact same situation but trying to stick to Tidal, if only just because I can’t go back to not having AI slop songs automatically hidden but I do notice how much better the recommendations are on Spotify whenever I open it again
It’s hard to scold, I think tidal is OK, but there is another… Napster! And it pays even more than tidal, like last I checked it wasn’t even close. But alas, their UX is awful. Awful enough I chose tidal for the time being. :/
From memory, Spotify is quite an outlier in terms of how bad it is. Like almost any competitor is better. People are going out of their way to choose the worst option and then virtue signalling online about it lol