Spotify VS. Tidal comparison
TIDAL is the first music service with High Fidelity sound quality, High Definition music videos and Curated Editorial, expertly crafted by music journalists. Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. Despite increasing competition, Spotify is still hands-down our favorite music streaming service. Both Spotify and Tidal have advantages and disadvantages. So we are going to make simple comparisons between Spotify and Tidal to find out Which streaming service is better.
Pricing
Spotify: $11.99/month for Individual, $16.99/month for Duo, $19.99/month for family, $5.99/month for student, free ad-supported service
Tidal: $10.99/month for Individual, $16.99/month for family, $5.49/month for student, free ad-supported plan,
Currently, TIDAL Free is only offered in the US. But Spotify Free is available in many countries. On the web or the desktop app you can play any track, album or playlist at any time or in any order, which is pretty good, but you’ll hear an ad, which you can’t skip, every few songs.
Sound Quality
| Service | Songs | Quality |
| Spotify | 100 Millions | Spotify Free: Spotify Premium: |
| Tidal | 110 Millions | 110M+ tracks in lossless, HiRes FLAC, and Dolby Atmos |
Discovery Features and Social
Spotify: Moderate curation, Facebook integration, optional apps, recommendations based on listening habits/occasions, genre and artist-led radio stations, Discover Weekly playlists
Tidal: Curated content from music journalists, artist interviews
Spotify navigates the vast universe of music for you and, based on your taste, recommend what they think will be your new favorite tracks. With Spotify social, you can share your favorite music and you will find all your Facebook friends in your People list. You can see your friend’s Facebook picture, name, published playlists, starred tracks and most-played tracks.
TIDAL Discovery allows submissions from unsigned artists through do-it-yourself distribution services. TIDAL Discovery is a place dedicated to specifically aspiring artists, and those who actually want to listen to them. Tidal also allows you to share music with your Facebook friends, but the social features are nowhere near as mature as the ones in Spotify.
Mobile Apps and Support
Spotify: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, PS4/PS3 app, desktop/web player, Apple Watch, Android Wear, Amazon Alexa, Google Home
Tidal: iOS, Android, desktop/web player
Spotify has the widest support, found in places where the other services aren’t. For example, it’s built into some home cinema receivers through Spotify Connect, and is generally considered the ‘default’ streaming service to support by wireless speaker makers.
Tidal? Not so much. As ever, Tidal is the service for those who are into streaming for the music side, rather than the tech peripheral side. It sticks to the standard web and mobile apps.
Offline Features
Spotify: You can download up to 10,000 songs on each of up to 5 different devices.
Tidal: Unlimited mobile downloads
Spotify has 10,000 track limit. This is split across three devices, divvied up as 3,333 downloads for each. If you’re a big music fan with an even bigger microSD card, this could prove a problem.
Tidal only limits offline downloads by the amount of storage on your device.
Music Library
Spotify: Over 100 million tracks, 6 million podcasts titles, and 350,000 audiobooks
Tidal: 110M+ tracks
Tidal has no podcasts or audiobooks, making it a better choice for people who want only music and good recommendations for discovery but don't want to follow friends and share collaborative playlists or listen to podcasts.
Lyrics
Both Tidal and Spotify gets the lyrics from Musixmatch. However, Tidal has better availability of lyrics.
Popularity
Spotify is the best music discovery platform you’ll find, it has a huge catalog, and it can be tested for free indefinitely. If you demand the highest audio resolution, and you’re willing to pay for it, you can subscribe to Tidal. Although Tidal provide the highest audio quality, Spotify still has the edge. Spotify’s user interface is accessible, uncluttered, and makes playlist management simple. What’s more, Spotify’s new music discovery playlists, especially Discover Weekly, keep it brilliantly fresh, and it’s also free for those who can’t yet make a commitment.
Artist payout
Tidal pays a lot more to artists per listen.
Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect
Both allows you to wirelessly stream music between devices. Elegant and dead simple. Spotify Connect interfaces with many more devices and speakers than Tidal Connect.
Other Important features
Tidal has fully fleshed out song/album credits. You can go the the credits, click on a particular session musician, and be taken to a page that lists all the songs associated with that artist. It is a nice added feature for music nerds.
Tidal supports Plex integration.
Spotify Converter
Download Spotify music to MP3, M4A, etc. with either free or premium account.
