TIDAL
Tidal is the world’s first music service with High Fidelity sound quality, High Definition music videos and Curated Editorial by music journalists, artists and experts, ...
- Freemium • Proprietary
- Music Streaming Service
- Internet Radio Service
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- iPad
- Windows
- Chromecast
- Roku
- Apple TV
- Mac
- Fire TV
- Android TV
What is TIDAL?
Tidal is the world’s first music service with High Fidelity sound quality, High Definition music videos and Curated Editorial by music journalists, artists and experts, making for a simply superior experience. Try it out and see for yourself.
• High Fidelity Sound Quality No compromises. Just pure sound. With our lossless audio experience, you can enjoy your music the way the artists intended. Unlimited access to over 25 million tracks.
• High Definition Music Videos Watch more than 75,000 music videos. No ads. No fuzzy images. Just crystal clear pictures.
• Curated Editorial Find your next favorite with expertly crafted recommendations, album presentations and playlists by experienced music journalists.
• Stories behind the music Read our integrated music articles, features and interviews.
• Offline mode Save albums and playlists offline, and bring your music with you anywhere using our offline mode for up to three devices.
• Audio search Wonder what’s that track playing on the radio? Never miss out again, get the answer instantly, using our Audio search.
• Favorites Build your personal music collection simply by marking albums, artists, tracks and playlists as your favorite.
You can of course also create playlists, share with friends, listen to artist- or track-based radio, check out artist bios, find similar artists, edit your play queue and much more…
TIDAL Screenshots
TIDAL Features
TIDAL information
Supported Languages
- English
- Bulgarian
- Croatian
- Danish
- French
- German
- Italian
- Norwegian Bokmål
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Serbian
- Slovene
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Turkish
Apple AppStore
- Updated
- 4.61 avg rating
Comments and Reviews
Tags
- Music Streaming
- Plex integration
- high-fidelity
- flac-converter
After 18 months with Tidal, I switched away to Spotify. I don't think Tidal is bad. In fact, I think it's excellent. Here are my impressions.
WHY TIDAL IS GOOD:
Tidal's best selling point is its lossless quality audio (FLAC). Two levels of service are offered: for c. $10/month you get 320 kbps, which is the same audio quality as the maximum offered by Spotify, Apple Music and others in this market. For $20/month you get "Hi-Fi" or CD quality (FLAC-based). Committed audiophiles will definitely benefit from this and notice the difference on SOME tracks if you also have high-end equipment. Most people who listen on headphones that cost below, say, $300-400 won't hear the difference between the 320kbps and FLAC. The reason is that 320kbps is generally excellent anyway and modern tracks are recorded in a way that maximize the quality of the sound even at 320. (This is done by cutting off what is recorded/played back at frequencies above what humans can hear, typically above 16 kHz.) Multiple tests show that people very rarely hear the difference, even professionals. Nevertheless, I believe I have heard the difference on occassion between the same tracks offered at 320 and FLAC with top-of-the range headphones. If that's your bag, Tidal are just about the only service that offer lossless quality audio, and I think that makes them worthy of support.
Tidal gets a lot else right. It has a good client for Windows and Mac, the feel of which is very much like that of Spotify, perhaps even more attractive and intuitive to navigate. It has a good mobile app which lets you download tracks to listen offline (e.g. if you anticipate not having signal). Note that FLAC quality tracks will eat up a lot of your mobile's storage space compared to 320 kbps.
WHAT TIDAL GETS WRONG:
Tidal has the following disadvantages compared to Spotify, its closest rival:
No Linux client. This sounds petty, but Linux is gaining popularity and to leave behind all those users is not nice. You can listen to Tidal, even on Linux, via their web-based player by logging in through a browser. However, the FLAC-quality music is playable only though Chrome (not even Chromium/Vivaldi or other related browsers). That's very bad for people interested in preserving their privacy, because Chrome constantly phones home to Google and reports what you're doing. Tidal need to develop a Linux client. End of story.
The search function in Tidal's client/web-based player is not as good as Spotify's. If you mis-spell a band's name, Tidal will sometimes fail to find what you have in mind. Spotify is pretty snappy at finding the right thing.
Compared to Spotify, Tidal has a worse music discovery system. They have curated play lists organized by genre, and those are generally very good. But there are fewer of them compared to Spotify, and users aren't able to make their playlists public, which means Tidal essentially misses out on the social element of music discovery. By contrast, in Spotify I can make a playlist and make it public. Which means it then becomes searchable and I can thereby listen to playlists made by bands, friends and many others with a unique take on organizing collections of songs.
WHY I LEFT TIDAL FOR SPOTIFY
I am very glad that Tidal offer the Hi-Fi (FLAC-based), CD-quality music. I think more services should have this option for the higher price, if need be. I have certainly benefited from it. In the end, however, 320 kbps is 99% as good in 95% of cases in the situations I listen to music (walking outside, in my car, on computer speakers, etc.) The rare cases I would sit down with my high-end headphones and really listen were too rare for me to pay the $20/month, although I think hardcore audiophiles would do that more often and would benefit more than I did. Spotify have a Linux client (I use Linux, Mac and Windows) and I couldn't stand Tidal's Chrome-based solution. Also, Spotify's superior music discovery and public playlist system was the straw that broke the camel's back. I wanted to stay with Tidal... but Spotify's features outweighed Tidal's. If Tidal improved their search, made a public playlist feature and developed a Linux client (or let others do it via their API), I'd probably go back.
On a side-note: Tidal's service has been mired in controversy, quite a lot of which is superficial noise. For example, Tidal's weird and tasteless publicity stunts have nothing to do with the quality of the service. However, there are consistent rumours that Tidal is not doing well financially and that its days are numbered. I hope not or that, if it does die, one of the other major music streaming services will pick up the mantle of providing CD-quality audio.
j
Reply written ago
I am really happy that this software is available in Poland. Because to me it is a music application "Numero Uno"!
Meh. The only feature that Tidal has is Hi-Fi sound and it's definitely not worth $20 a month. In all the other features, it's far behind the other competitors. For Hi-Fi music, I'd recommend Deezer over Tidal. For standard quality music, Google Play Music All Access is my favorite. I can upload music that isn't available through All Access and allows me to streaming it the same way as All Access.
Though now it looks like Amazon is offering "HD" music for a better price (than Tidal) at $12.99 a month (if you already pay for Prime). I haven't tried it yet, but it does look compelling.
There are other options also, if you already have your own FLAC collection (besides just storing the music on your phone). One is Subsonic, which turns your computer into a music server and allows you to stream your FLAC collection over the internet (with Android and iOS apps). If you don't want to leave your computer on all the time, another service called Astiga which allows you to stream your FLAC collection from many "Cloud" services (Dropbox, Google Drive, pCloud, etc.). Both options offer a free option or a premium option; $1/month for Subsonic or $4/month for Astiga. Both options are pretty decent though Astiga is still early in development (in 2019), but it does show promise.
Tidal's cool for all the other reasons you've seen, but most important to me is the fact that the student tier also applies to high school students. That's $5 USD per month with a free month.
Tidal is a moment that will forever change the course of music history
their mission goes beyond commerce, it goes beyond technology. Our intent is to preserve music’s importance in our lives and I am glad that something like this finally happened!
This is a very good alternative to Spotify, with a catalogue bigger than that of the swedish streaming service. They don't have a free offering however and you're required to install Adobe AIR to get the program running. Prices for downloading songs are within the same range of similar service providers, but through the different monthly subscription plans they offer you can stream and listen to everything.