Tidal vs. Spotify: Which music streaming service has the fea…

Spotify has over 220 million subscribers and access to a massive library of artists, albums, podcasts, and audiobooks. A popular music-streaming platform, Spotify is available on almost every desktop and mobile device one can think of. Although it’s a great way to enjoy your favorite tunes, it’s definitely not the only music streamer in town. In fact, if you’re just committed to listening Best-Sounding audio, Tidal might be a better fit. With an emphasis on high-resolution content, Tidal is also home to a vast collection of music and video content.

But is one of these music streaming platforms really the better of the two? To find out, we compared Spotify and Tidal, focusing on criteria like price, sound quality, and supported devices.

price

For individual users, Spotify has two tiers of service: the free, ad-supported tier that gives you access to the entire library of Spotify content, but severely restricts how you can interact with it (ads. Not mentioned). Its full-featured premium plan is $11 per month, which is pretty standard for the industry at this point. Spotify also offers a $15 per month plan for two people, which it bills as Spotify Premium Duo. There’s also a student plan for just $6 per month and a six-person family plan (with parental controls) for $17 per month.

Students get an especially good deal; A student Spotify Premium plan entitles you to a free, ad-supported Hulu account as well as Showtime access. If you’ve never signed up for Spotify before, you’ll be able to try Spotify Premium free for 30 days. All of its paid plans let you download up to 10,000 songs for offline listening on up to five different devices.

Similar to Spotify, Tidal also offers free listening with occasional ad interruptions and limited track skipping. On the free tier, track quality is also limited to 160kbps. However, the two best versions of Tidal are paywalled, and these are the HiFi and HiFi Plus plans. The first is $11 per month and gives you full access to Tidal’s entire music and video catalog, ad-free, including offline downloads and better track quality (up to 16-bit 44.1kHz). You’ll also get access to some other great features, like Live on Tidal for shared listening in real-time with other Tidal customers, as well as expertly curated playlists.

If you want the best audio quality, you’ll want to sign up for Tidal’s HiFi Plus plan, which will run you $20 per month. At this level, you will be able to enjoy some tracks up to 24-bit 192kHz. Supported hi-res formats include HiRes FLAC, Dolby Atmos, FLAC, Sony 360 Reality Audio, and MQA (although things are changing with this format). All the benefits of the HiFi plan are also included in the HiFi Plus level.

Like Spotify, Tidal also offers a range of student, family, military, and first responder plans. Family pricing starts at $17 per month and covers up to six household members, while the Student plan offers 50 percent less than the cost of the HiFi or HiFi Plus plan. There is also a 40% discount for military and first responders.

Both HiFi and HiFi Plus plans are free for the first 30 days. Taking all these pricing options into account, we’re going to give Spotify one point for its low monthly cost.

the winner:Spotify

supported devices

Tidal has apps for all major platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, tvOS, Android, and Android TV. With an emphasis on the audiophile crowd, it also supports some very high-end streaming components from brands like Astelle & Kern, Devialet, Denon, Harman Kardon, KEF, Martin Logan, and Meridian. Its support for more common devices like game consoles or even the Roku platform is more weak. Users who want to get Tidal streaming on these devices may need to sign up for a Plex account. You can add your Tidal account to Plex, and from there you can use the Plex client on a variety of media streamers and game consoles.

Spotify covers not only the major platforms, but also a small number of connected audio devices that the service doesn’t support. From smart speakers to smartwatches, and even some audiophile brands covered by Tidal, Spotify’s device support is arguably the best among all music streaming services.

the winner:Spotify

Musical diversity and catalog size

This may be the hardest category to decide on. As of October 2023, Tidal claims a 100 million track library with 650,000 videos. Spotify claims to have over 100 million tracks, as well as 5 million podcasts and 350,000 audiobooks. We have yet to find an independent source that can verify these claims, so we’ll take them at their word for now.

Determining musical diversity can also be difficult. The general understanding is that Tidal’s catalog leans toward rap and hip-hop artists, particularly young and relatively unknown artists. This is in keeping with Tidal’s ownership structure, which is largely comprised of successful musicians like Jay-Z, who have an interest in promoting other talent. However, this perception may be biased through Tidal’s editorial and recommendation processes, both of which foreground these genres more than others.

For its part, Spotify’s catalog appears to be more balanced, though again, this may be a reflection of how the service automatically begins to suit listeners’ demonstrated musical interests. We are aware that some artists have actively refused to have their music streamed by Spotify due to concerns about inadequate royalty payments (the majority of which arise from its free, ad-supported tier). Taylor Swift famously boycotted the company in 2014, though she has since added back some of her albums.

With claimed catalog sizes that are the largest in the industry and no objective way to evaluate any of them, we’re calling it a tie.

the winner: Drag

sound quality

If it was difficult to assess the type and quantity of music on each service, then the sound quality is easy to determine. Spotify’s compressed, 320kbps streaming quality sounds great on most audio devices, and for casual listening or in venues with a lot of competing noise, it’s probably more than enough. Tidal’s free listening is basically the same. But if your ears are yearning for something better, it’s hard to beat Tidal’s HiFi Plus subscription with the double whammy of a lossless, CD-quality stream for the entire catalog and a small but worthy catalog of high-resolution tracks.

There’s a small caveat here: To get the most out of Tidal’s high-bandwidth stream, you’ll need a compatible device and, in some cases, a DAC. Virtually all of Tidal’s supported devices can handle its lossless CD-quality streams. But mobile users, take note: these streams will eat up your data allotment at a much faster rate (four times faster) than free tier audio, and its high-resolution tracks will eat it up even faster.

Speaking of high-resolution, Tidal delivers the said tracks through formats like Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio, and MQA. Some Tidal devices will let you play MQA streams but limit the quality (Apple devices), while others can play MQA in its full, studio-quality depth. Here’s a handy list of all the devices that work with MQA.

the winner:tidal

Videos, Podcasts, and more

These days, music streaming services are about much more than just music. Videos, podcasts, interviews and live concerts are all becoming important parts of the mix. Tidal has chosen to focus on videos and live concert recordings, some of which are exclusive to the service. It has a catalog of over 650,000 videos, some of which are live concerts, entire live concerts or parts of special shows. For mobile users, the ability to download any of these videos for offline viewing is a big help in avoiding data charges.

Spotify also has videos, but the company seems hesitant when it comes to promoting them. You won’t find any video categories when you browse, and even search filtering options like “View All Artists” lack a “View All Videos” item. All you really need to do is search for a specific song or podcast, and then see if there is a video associated with the stream. If there is, you will be able to press play and start watching it.

Some people also have problems accessing video content, even when it is available. If you’re trying to watch from the Spotify mobile app, you’ll need to go into the app settings and turn the toggle off audio quality, For whatever reason, this appears to act as a workaround for the missing videos.

As far as Spotify’s podcast content goes, the company claims a catalog of over 5 million podcasts. Tidal had a total of 25 podcasts when we checked at the publication of this article.

As impressed as we are with Tidal’s video catalog, you subscribe to a music streaming service primarily because of the audio. With the huge increase in popularity of podcast listening, we’re giving it up to Spotify.

the winner:Spotify

conclusion

For most people, Spotify’s extensive music catalog, its vast device support, and the variety of both its paid and free plans make it the obvious choice. It’s no coincidence that it’s the most popular streaming music service in the world. For these reasons, we’re declaring it the overall winner.

However, in a universe of compressed digital files, Tidal’s HiFi and HiFi Plus tiers allow you to enjoy true high-fidelity music from an easy-to-access subscription service. And while new platforms like Qobuz have arrived to challenge Tidal’s dominance over HiFi listening, ultra-premium audio is still what the platform does best, and Tidal shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.