Spotify vs Tidal vs Apple Music vs Youtube Music which one is better?
Tidal is the most popular option for audiophiles. What I also like about it is the fact that they pay artists much more fairly than other platforms. According to this, they payout $0.013 per stream on average (which means $1 per 77 streams). Because I listen to a lot of unknown artists it is important to me to be on a platform where I can support those artists much more directly.
AFAIK Spotify only pays the overall most listened to artists like Taylor Swift etc. I canceled my Spotify subscription when Neil Young quit Spotify.
EDIT: because this is becoming a bit popular, for anyone looking to migrate from Spotify to Tidal, I recommend this simple to use python script to migrate your playlists. And because we have a lot of Linux users here, check out tidal-hifi.
Tidal may be most popular but the use of the lossy MQA codec for their "lossless" offerings is objectively worse than Deezer, Apple music and even Amazon Music.
Good thing they are migrating to FLAC! Also, while MQA is objectively worse, subjectively it's pretty much equal to objectively better options. At least for us humans :) I found this double-blind test of MQA critic Archimago and they couldn't find a statistically significant difference between MQA and PCM :)
Is Neil on Tidal? I know he is in QoBuz.
He is! And I think he returned to Spotify as well. Nope, still off.
I'm thinking of switching to Tidal. I've had YouTube music for awhile and I like it, but I just learned they fired a huge chunk of their staff after they unionized and that pissed me off. Anybody know how their rock and jazz selection is, especially with smaller lesser known artists?
I mainly listen to punk and it's extremely hard to find bands that are not on Tidal. When I migrated my playlists to Tidal from Spotify, there was only 1 Band which didn't exist on Tidal. But because it was only 1 song that was part of one of my playlists, I simply didn't care. I don't even remember which one it was. Aha, they're called Valentiine (3 piece all-girl garage rock band from Melbourne, Australia) and they're still not on Tidal. Still don't care.
Can't speak for Jazz though.
Tidal also laid off 10% of their staff in December. Probably not union busting, at least.
If you care about sound quality, Tidal and Qobuz are the best. The rest comes down to preference, IMHO. I like Tidal's recommendations, but I've also heard good things about Spotify's and Apple's
Qobuz
EDIT: this is when you have audio quality preferences and currating like Tidal does. But in the end it's a matter of taste. Platform A has sometimes songs and albums that platform B does not have and vice versa.
But for your decision making, you can't go wrong with Tidal. If you have a good dac/hifi installation, you may want to opt for hifi plus. But the lossless plain hifi subscription is perfect if you are not super sound picky and not having a above decent installation.
EDIT EDIT:
They are merging hifi and hifi plus to a 10.99 offering. That is actually very good value if you don't care about the DJ part. I am even considering this to ditch my Qobuz sub.
Haha ignore this post
Tidal's electronic selection isn't great, it's why I left the platform. But if you're into pop music, and especially hip hop, it's got you covered.
A few years ago I did listening comparisons of Amazon Music, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal and Quobuzz. At least for my ears, Tidal was way better, with engaging dynamic range and clarity. Quobuzz was just a little better, while listening to Spotify and Amazon Music was like FM radio in comparison, loud and compressed.
Pricewise, they're all somewhat similar. I went with Tidal because it has good quality, a good catalogue, and pays the artists better.
I spent a few months with each of them recently.
For me, Apple Music recommendations are by far the best. Tidal was decent but the UI was a pain and the integrations didn’t work well. Spotify had great integrations and easy device switching, but the recommendations were terrible, for me. YouTube music is the worst of the batch. Bad UI, bad recommendations, and just not a music lovers platform.
So, I use Apple Music. For me, it is the best since the GOAT Google Play Music was retired.
Interesting. For me, none of any recommendation algorithm worked decently well for me. I find new bands via following other bands (on Instagram, sadly), look at what they listen to, what bands they hang/tour/do concerts with or by asking other punks or by checking other communities.
It takes a month or so before recommendations start to get close to my tastes. Apple has consistently recommended either old bands I haven’t listened to in years or new bands that I end up liking. Sure, they still fail from time to time, but I listen to a very wide variety and Apple seems to be the only platform to recognize that if I’m listening to metallica, I don’t want to hear kid cudi in the same playlist
Spotify vs Tidal vs Apple Music vs Youtube Music which one is better?
Tidal is the most popular option for audiophiles. What I also like about it is the fact that they pay artists much more fairly than other platforms. According to this, they payout $0.013 per stream on average (which means $1 per 77 streams). Because I listen to a lot of unknown artists it is important to me to be on a platform where I can support those artists much more directly.
AFAIK Spotify only pays the overall most listened to artists like Taylor Swift etc. I canceled my Spotify subscription when Neil Young quit Spotify.
EDIT: because this is becoming a bit popular, for anyone looking to migrate from Spotify to Tidal, I recommend this simple to use python script to migrate your playlists. And because we have a lot of Linux users here, check out tidal-hifi.
Tidal may be most popular but the use of the lossy MQA codec for their "lossless" offerings is objectively worse than Deezer, Apple music and even Amazon Music.
Good thing they are migrating to FLAC! Also, while MQA is objectively worse, subjectively it's pretty much equal to objectively better options. At least for us humans :) I found this double-blind test of MQA critic Archimago and they couldn't find a statistically significant difference between MQA and PCM :)
Is Neil on Tidal? I know he is in QoBuz.
He is!
And I think he returned to Spotify as well.Nope, still off.I'm thinking of switching to Tidal. I've had YouTube music for awhile and I like it, but I just learned they fired a huge chunk of their staff after they unionized and that pissed me off. Anybody know how their rock and jazz selection is, especially with smaller lesser known artists?
I mainly listen to punk and it's extremely hard to find bands that are not on Tidal. When I migrated my playlists to Tidal from Spotify, there was only 1 Band which didn't exist on Tidal. But because it was only 1 song that was part of one of my playlists, I simply didn't care.
I don't even remember which one it was.Aha, they're called Valentiine (3 piece all-girl garage rock band from Melbourne, Australia) and they're still not on Tidal. Still don't care.Can't speak for Jazz though.
Tidal also laid off 10% of their staff in December. Probably not union busting, at least.
If you care about sound quality, Tidal and Qobuz are the best. The rest comes down to preference, IMHO. I like Tidal's recommendations, but I've also heard good things about Spotify's and Apple's
Qobuz
EDIT: this is when you have audio quality preferences and currating like Tidal does. But in the end it's a matter of taste. Platform A has sometimes songs and albums that platform B does not have and vice versa.
But for your decision making, you can't go wrong with Tidal. If you have a good dac/hifi installation, you may want to opt for hifi plus. But the lossless plain hifi subscription is perfect if you are not super sound picky and not having a above decent installation.
EDIT EDIT:
They are merging hifi and hifi plus to a 10.99 offering. That is actually very good value if you don't care about the DJ part. I am even considering this to ditch my Qobuz sub.
Haha ignore this post
Tidal's electronic selection isn't great, it's why I left the platform. But if you're into pop music, and especially hip hop, it's got you covered.
A few years ago I did listening comparisons of Amazon Music, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal and Quobuzz. At least for my ears, Tidal was way better, with engaging dynamic range and clarity. Quobuzz was just a little better, while listening to Spotify and Amazon Music was like FM radio in comparison, loud and compressed.
Pricewise, they're all somewhat similar. I went with Tidal because it has good quality, a good catalogue, and pays the artists better.
I spent a few months with each of them recently.
For me, Apple Music recommendations are by far the best. Tidal was decent but the UI was a pain and the integrations didn’t work well. Spotify had great integrations and easy device switching, but the recommendations were terrible, for me. YouTube music is the worst of the batch. Bad UI, bad recommendations, and just not a music lovers platform.
So, I use Apple Music. For me, it is the best since the GOAT Google Play Music was retired.
Interesting. For me, none of any recommendation algorithm worked decently well for me. I find new bands via following other bands (on Instagram, sadly), look at what they listen to, what bands they hang/tour/do concerts with or by asking other punks or by checking other communities.
It takes a month or so before recommendations start to get close to my tastes. Apple has consistently recommended either old bands I haven’t listened to in years or new bands that I end up liking. Sure, they still fail from time to time, but I listen to a very wide variety and Apple seems to be the only platform to recognize that if I’m listening to metallica, I don’t want to hear kid cudi in the same playlist