Spotify vs. Tidal: Which is the best music streaming service for you?

(Paradigm credit: Spotify/Tidal)

Yous've probably noticed Spotify has been making the news lately — and, for once, it's for reasons other than its ubiquity. A very public calling-out past Neil Young has led to the sort of argue around liberty of speech and creative integrity that social media thrives on.

(It should probably be noted that Neil Young has, during the form of his vi-decade recording career, cared very little about the style other people perceive him. Not every recording artist has been sued by their own record company for producing music 'unrepresentative' of their previous recordings, for example…)

It'south resulted in the first reverse in Spotify'southward financial trajectory since the visitor was founded in 2006. And it's led to any number of Spotify subscribers wondering about alternative music-streaming services… If you're one of them, read on — this face-off is for y'all.

We're comparison Spotify to Tidal. Tidal was the commencement music streaming service to offering a couple of significant points of difference to Spotify: (supposedly) superior audio quality and (supposedly) college payments to recording artists. And its artist-axial position has been championed past the likes of — hey! — Neil Immature. But does it make more sense than Spotify for you?

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Spotify vs. Tidal: Cost

If you can tolerate ads between songs and ads interrupting your app experience, then Spotify tin can be yours for costless. Options for its advert-free paid-for service include handy discounts for students, a ii-account package chosen 'Duo' (which includes a curated and evolving playlist based on listening habits) and a family membership giving up to vi accounts.

Tidal can't exist had for free, but it too offers students a useful discount. Later on that, there are a couple of packages that are differentiated (generally) by sound quality: 'HiFi' and 'HiFi Plus', both of which are bachelor as unmarried or family subscriptions.

Spotify vs. Tidal: At a glance

	Spotify	Tidal
Starting price	free	$9.99 p/1000
Offline style, no ads	$9.99 p/yard	$9.99 p/yard (HiFi); $19.99 p/m (HiFi Plus)
Educatee price	$iv.99 p/m	$4.99 p/thousand (HiFi); $9.99 p/one thousand (HiFi Plus)
'Duo' household	$12.99 p/m (ii accounts)	n/a
Family package	$15.99 p/m (half-dozen accounts)	$14.99 p/m (six accounts, HiFi); $29.99 (six accounts, HiFi Plus)
Annual programme	$99	n/a
Exclusives	Spotify Studios podcasts	TIDAL X concerts

Spotify vs. Tidal: Music library

Despite some reasonably high-profile artists asking for their music to be removed from its roster, Spotify continues to offer a catalogue of over 70 1000000 titles. A couple of million of these are podcast titles (not all of them equally contentious equally Joe Rogan'due south). Tidal, meanwhile, is claiming over eighty million titles, every bit well as getting on for half a million video titles.

Composition of iPhone, Apple Watch and Airpods while using Spotify online music streaming apps. M — (Image credit: Moma Okgo | Shutterstock)

When yous're talking about numbers of this size, it's obvious there's a massive amount of overlap between the two libraries — the likes of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell notwithstanding. Unless you've peculiarly catholic tastes (I am still waiting for Ginger Thompson's glorious Boy Watcher to bear witness up on either service), you'll exist able to find the content you're after on either Spotify or Tidal.

Winner: Draw

Spotify vs. Tidal: Music quality

Here'south where the most significant differences between Spotify and Tidal can exist found. Spotify's streams run at three compression rates: a bluntly miserly 96kbps, 160kbps and 320kbps. If you're paying for Spotify, rather than using the free tier, everything comes across at 320kbps.

Tidal, by manner of contrast, streams at a CD-quality 1411kbps on its 'HiFi' tier. A top-of-the-store 'HiFi Plus' subscription, meanwhile, buys access to some music mastered in Sony 360 Reality Sound and Dolby Atmos spatial sound, plus admission to millions of truly loftier-resolution audio titles. 'Tidal Masters' use MQA engineering to stream at a light-headed 9216kbps.

Spotify has been promising a 'HiFi' tier of its own for quite a while now — but details (of the launch date, of the number of titles that volition be available, and of exactly what 'HiFi' means in this context) remain sketchy in the extreme.

Winner: Tidal

Spotify vs. Tidal: Availability

Obviously both services have been working on making themselves available on every bit wide a variety of platforms as possible. Spotify is available on the nigh recent Sony and Microsoft games consoles, for example, and tin be accessed on quite a few smartwatches and other connected wearables too. Its app also shows upwards on whatsoever number of smart TV interfaces.

Tidal can be accessed via quite a few televisions, as well — it's pretty much a fixture on the Android Goggle box interface. It's available on iOS too, and tin exist integrated into your Sonos system. And naturally enough both Spotify and Tidal support Google Chromecast and Apple AirPlay.

Spotify car thing — (Image credit: Spotify)

Spotify'southward 'Motorcar Thing' (a little touchscreen device to enable safe and stable streaming while you're driving) is a prissy point of difference. Tidal has to make do with integration into Apple CarPlay. But the reward information technology held for quite a while with 'Spotify Connect', which allows paying customers to stream directly to systems on a common network, has lately been removed. Tidal has a very similar characteristic now, called - can you guess? - 'Tidal Connect'.

Winner: Spotify

Spotify vs. Tidal: Playlists and curated content

At that place's not a huge amount of difference here. Both Spotify and Tidal will present the user with personalized playlists, based on listening history and algorithmic jiggery-pokery. They'll also both recommend artists y'all may not accept listened to. Most of the time they're both pretty successful, and not as predictable as you might imagine. They can trip themselves up, though — it seems unlikely I'll ever forget the fourth dimension Spotify recommended Nat King Cole to me on the basis I enjoyed listening to Patti Smith.

Spotify playlist — (Prototype credit: Spotify)

Spotify's efforts in helping you find new music shouldn't exist understated, though. Between its 'Discover Weekly' characteristic and 'Release Radar' weekly playlist, you're unlikely to be stuck for something new and interesting to heed to. It certainly has the edge over Tidal, though the latter's 'My Daily Discovery' and 'Mixes For You' playlist are undeniably worthwhile too.

Winner: Spotify

Spotify is, to put information technology bluntly, all over this. Y'all tin can share Spotify content on Instagram and Facebook, and create links to share playlists and the like on pretty much any messaging platform. If information technology tin can't embed Spotify, basically, it's non really social media.

Tidal'south desktop app lets yous bank check artists' social media channels direct, and if you connect your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts yous can easily scroll through your favourite artist's feed(s).

Winner: Spotify

Spotify vs. Tidal: Pattern

Large images? Check. Big search bar? Bank check. Full suite of playback controls? Check. Legible fonts and logical navigation? Check and check over again.

Really, the biggest differences here are aesthetic. In truth, Tidal has copped a lot from Spotify's design and interface - but it'southward no less usable and constructive for that.

Winner: Draw

Spotify vs. Tidal: Value

Given that Spotify tin be yours for free, it's hard to suggest it's annihilation other than good value. Only once y'all start talking about paying for these streaming services, Tidal makes a very compelling instance for itself. Pay the same corporeality as you'll pay for Spotify and the music you lot have access to is far less compressed. Pay more and genuinely high-resolution audio is on the bill of fare, likewise every bit spatial audio mixes.

Basically, if y'all're willing to spend, spend on Tidal.

Winner: Tidal

Spotify vs. Tidal: Creative person remuneration

Given that one of the founding principles of Tidal is to offer a (slightly) more reasonable deal to the artists whose music it features, you won't exist staggered to learn information technology has the better of Spotify where this sort of thing is concerned.

Spotify doesn't pay a set corporeality per stream of each private song. Instead, it calculates a 'stream share' past totalling up the number of streams per calendar month and estimates the proportion of those that were for a item creative person or song. It's probably more easily expressed as "give well-nigh of the money to Ed and Taylor'.

If you're a subscriber to Tidal HiFi Plus, you at least can take comfort in the cognition that well-nigh 10% of your subscription is shared between the artists you listen to the almost. And starting this twelvemonth, your virtually-streamed artists volition exist paid based on your streaming habits.

Winner: Tidal

Spotify vs. Tidal: Sound functioning

First of all, let'south take that it'southward fair enough to get what yous're given if you're using Spotify for free. 96kbps is a chronically inadequate bit-rate, and music streamed at this standard is a cheap facsimile of the real thing — merely at $0.00 per month information technology's however unarguable value for money.

If you're paying, and if yous're probable to heed using a smartphone and an inexpensive pair of headphones, in that location's a adventure you lot won't discern much departure betwixt Spotify'southward 320kbps files and Tidal'southward 1411kbps equivalents — although the differences in particular levels, in detail, should exist obvious to pretty much any listener.

Tidal played on apple watch — (Image credit: Tidal)

Information technology's those who are in this for musical pleasure, rather than straightforward convenience, who take the well-nigh to gain by shelling out for Tidal'south meridian tier, though. Using an appropriate system (whether that's mobile with headphones or in the abode with speakers), a Tidal Masters file (of which, let's not forget, in that location are literally millions) compares to Spotify's equivalent file in the same sort of way three courses at a posh restaurant compares to a service-station sandwich. Y'all don't need to be an audiophile, you don't need to take spent a fortune on headphones and you don't demand gilded ears. You only have to listen.

Winner: Tidal

Spotify vs. Tidal: Which is all-time?

Spotify bankrupt this new ground. It did information technology first and, for a long fourth dimension, information technology did it best. But those days are over. Tidal's not the only streaming service to have adopted the Spotify model and adapted it for its own purposes — but where pure sound quality is concerned it's one of the best streaming services around. Which is only every bit it should exist, considering it's one of the well-nigh costly.

Tidal still lags behind Spotify where broad integration (especially games consoles) and social media smarts are concerned, and it's debatable whether its curation and discovery algorithms are on a par. Just if it'south the music that primarily concerns you, and yous're prepared to pay to mind to information technology, in that location's merely one place to put your subscription money — and that's Tidal.