Tidal vs. Spotify

Hands down Tidal. The difference is quality of the tracks is not subtle - it's downright obvious. On my main system (220SE with CM9S2) or on my macbook speakers. There is no contest, no ambiguity - Tidal sound better. And I'm a paying member of Spotiy Premium and Tidal Premium (not even Tidal HiFi). 

This month's Stereophile has 56 Records to Die For, some of which are on the obscure side.

Forty of them are on TIDAL.  I'm gonna roll up my sleeves and get to listenin'.

The key to the search function is to know that you have to spell words right, and that the field in which you input your query (artist or album, for example) denotes the _output_ of your search.  So if I want to find the album Armed Forces by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, I'll enter just two distinctive words -- Elvis Armed -- in the Album search box and it will pop right up.  Less intuitive, yes, but if you know how to work it, it works....

I can't bring myself to pay the $20 a month for Tidal. It seriously needs to be lower or they will never be able to compete and get enough people to stay strong and be able to pay for enough content. So I just upgraded to Spotify premium for $10 (well 90 days free first). The regular sound quality of Spotify is not great. But the premium is phenomenally better. I actually think Spotify lowers the bitrate though at peak times to handle the peak loads. At least on the free Spotify. A hunch I have. That drove me nuts because it seemed the sound quality would lower at certain times. So I got premium and really hope they don't do that with premium.  I'd love hi def music videos though. I might do Tidal at $15. But honestly they really drop the ball by not having a free service with ads or something, or at least needs to be easier to jump in and get going and get a feel for it before I'm having to give my credit card. 

Yep.  Reading Stereophile and having access to the music you are readng the reviews on uncompressed, with Tidal, is sweet.   

kacz - I've been a Spotify Premium subscriber for months and months now.  To me, the best $10 per month subscription ever.  I've not noticed any variation in quality of their stream based on time of day.  I have noticed that not all the available recordings are of the same quality.  Some are noticeably better than others.  Given spending $10 per month vs $20 and based on the very subtle degree of difference I heard in Tidal's own audio quality "test" (as in, "Are your ears or is your system good enough"...words to that effect) Tidal was just not worth it to me.  If comparing the non-premium, free Spotify SQ to Tidal SQ however, I could see why some might think Tidal is much better.