Tidal vs. Spotify: Which Streaming Service Should You Buy

Both Tidal and Spotify are excellent platforms that are popular for providing phenomenal user experience to its users. But which streaming service should you buy? That’s not an easy question to answer, to be honest, because both the platforms have their own unique features and benefits. So, today we will make these two phenomenal platforms compete against each other to identify their pros and cons so that you can make a prudent decision.

Music Discovery

Both the streaming services are amazing and allow their users to browse music based upon different genres, moods, artists, countries, etc. Spotify comes with the “Discover Weekly” feature, which is basically a music playlist that contains curated songs from your favorite artists and genres.

On the other hand, Tidal has a unique feature called “Tidal Rising,” which allows its users to discover new tracks and albums from upcoming artists and singers. Besides this, it has a “Top” feature that allows its users to access Billboard’s top songs based upon genre, tracks, albums, etc. However, Spotify appears to be a better option than Tidal because it offers a vast collection of different playlists to its users based upon different genres.

Content

Tidal has a vast library of tracks as compared to Spotify. Tidal has a large music library that has more than 60 million tracks in it. While Spotify has 10 million songs in its music library. Besides this, Tidal has many exclusive tracks on its platform from artists like Rihanna.

Spotify, on the other hand, is a perfect pick for someone who likes to listen to podcasts. Spotify has a vast collection of over 1 million podcasts on its platform. Tidal also offers podcasts to its users, but its selection is not that big. However, Tidal has a big collection of videos on it (250,000 videos), whereas Spotify has a small collection of videos on its platform.

Sound Quality

In terms of sound quality Tidal clearly defeats Spotify. Tidal offers four different audio settings to its users:

Normal-This audio setting is designed to consume less cellular data and can be very helpful when you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection for streaming music on Tidal.

High-This audio setting improves the audio quality of the music track that you are listening to while not consuming that much data.

HiFi-This audio setting provides CD-quality audio to its users.

Master- This audio setting provides high-quality (HD audio) audio to its users.

Spotify, on the other hand, offers five audio settings to its users: Automatic, Low, Normal, High, and Premium. However, the platform’s audio quality tops out at 320 kbps, which is similar to the audio quality provided by Tidal’s High mode. So, if you are someone that loves to listen to only high-quality songs, then Tidal is the perfect pick for you. But you will have to spend some money on good headphones/earbuds, or you will not be able to enjoy your favorite songs in high-quality.

Pricing

Spotify offers both free and paid plans to its users. But if you choose the free plan, you will not get the most out of the platform. For example, you can’t download your favorite songs for listening to them offline or skip ads if you are using Spotify’s free plan. However, you can remove all these limitations by upgrading to the premium plan of Spotify. The premium plan comes with a price tag of $9.99 per month or $4.99(For students only).

Tidal, on the other hand, does not offer any free plans to its users. However, its subscription plans are not that expensive and are somewhat identical to Spotify Premium plans. Additionally, Tidal offers a much better streaming experience to its users in comparison to Spotify.

Conclusion

Tidal appears to be a better option if we talk about track collection, sound quality, and content. So, if you are someone for whom quality is everything, then Tidal is a perfect pick for you. However, if you are looking for a free music streaming service, then Spotify is the perfect pick for you.

Source:- Tidal vs. Spotify