Choosing the best music streaming service for your requirements can be a little challenging; while streaming is still fairly new in the grand scheme of music-listening, there are numerous platforms to pick from nowadays, two of the most significant being Spotify and Tidal
Spotify is presently the world’s most popular streaming service, hitting 113 million customers in October last year, and continuing to grow; and that remains in spite of mounting competition from the similarity Apple Music
However Spotify isn’t perfect as a service, and its lossy audio streams have left audiophiles craving a bit more fidelity– which is where Tidal comes in.
With a focus on providing Hi-Res Audio at a CD-like level of quality, the platform was gotten in 2015 by hip-hop star Jay-Z, becoming the very first major music service to be owned by the artists themselves. Tidal claims to pay greater royalties than its rivals to artists and songwriters.
It’s not just about ethics and audio quality though; both Spotify and Tidal deal various user experiences, pricing structures, and music catalogues. Making the very best option for your requirements can be confusing, to state the least.
That’s why we’ve put together this useful guide to both services so you can compare them in one easy location, and hopefully learn whether Spotify or Tidal is the best streaming service for you.
- Make certain you read our Spotify evaluation
- … and, don’t miss our Tidal review, too
Rate and accessibility
Both Spotify and Tidal deal a number of different membership tiers– however just Spotify uses a totally free strategy (though it is ad-supported and you can’t listen to tracks in the order you desire).
The most inexpensive paid Spotify plan is Spotify Premium, which costs $9.99/ ₤ 9.99/ AU$1199 per month, and provides you endless access to its 30 million-plus track library on your laptop, phone, and tablet. Spotify Premium likewise lets you download tracks to three devices at a time for offline playback.
Discount rates are offered for trainees, and you can even get Premium and access to mindfulness app Headspace under one affordable strategy. Students get Headspace access as part of their Premium bundle.
If there are a couple of people in your home that want to use Spotify, you can save cash by registering to a Spotify Premium for Household account, which enables approximately six people to link to Spotify at one time (if you try to do this with a routine account, you’ll get rubbed out the service as soon as another user plays a song). This tier costs $1499/ ₤1499/ AU$1799, and requires all members to live under the same roofing.
Tidal offers 2 membership plans, the cheapest being Tidal Premium, which costs $9.99/ ₤ 9.99/ AU$1199, and uses streams at a bitrate of 320 kbps–