Jul 17, 2020 Spotify offers automatic, low, normal, high, and very high quality with different bitrates for different users by formatting the music as OGG Vorbis format. Following is the full table about all the bitrates that Spotify streaming at. Click or tap the “Streaming Quality” drop-down menu and select one of the available options on Mac or Windows. Android, iPhone, and iPad users can select one of the options listed under “Streaming” instead. These range from low to very high on Android, iPhone, iPad, and Mac, or from normal to very high on Windows.
If you’re looking to get into music streaming, there are several ways you can go, but picking the right service depends heavily on what you want out of it. No two platforms are as different as Spotify and Tidal; where Spotify prioritizes social features and personalized algorithms, Tidal prioritizes sound quality and puts artists first.
Editor’s note: This Tidal vs Spotify article was updated on October 22, 2020, to improve alt text.
Tidal vs Spotify: Music discovery
Spotify and Tidal both have clean, dark-themed user interfaces.
Both Tidal and Spotify offer various music discovery features and enable browsing by genre, mood, activity and more. Additionally, whether you’re on Tidal or Spotify, you have access to a radio feature that makes it easy to discover music similar to what you’re already listening to. Both streaming services use algorithms to learn your music tastes and recommend songs, but the ways in which they do so differ.
Tidal creates up to eight playlists that focus on eight different genres that you listen to a lot and have saved to “My Collection,” called “My Mix”. If you only listen to three genres regularly, however, it only gives you three playlists. These update gradually, rather than on a weekly schedule like Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. And, if you like the “My Mix” you’re listening to today, you can save it as a separate playlist that isn’t lost forever when the mix updates.
Spotify and Tidal share similar music discovery features, but Spotify takes it a step further with expansive playlist options that may be filtered by mood, genre, activity, and more.
Spotify’s algorithms create not only the “Discover Weekly” playlist, but a weekly “Release Radar” playlist, up to six “Daily Mix” playlists, and, every so often: special static playlists such as “Your Time Capsule.” The “Discover Weekly” feature collects data about your listening habits, and recommends songs from artists and genres that you like. “Release Radar” is a one-stop shop for newly released music from all the artists you follow on Spotify. “Daily Mix” playlists combine music you’ve been listening to a lot recently and similar songs, and is essentially the same feature as Tidal’s My Mix. Algorithmically designed static playlists are Spotify exclusives released every so often and not on a particular schedule. For example, “Your Time Capsule” was a playlist released for Spotify users in 2017, and it used recent listening data to create a playlist of music users would likely have listened to as a teenager.
Don’t miss: Best streaming services
Spotify has a “Charts” tab, which organizes the top songs all over the world by which country they came from. These playlists tell you if the song is new, on the uptrend, or on the downtrend. Tidal also has charts playlists, but there are fewer of them. On the other hand, Tidal has “Tidal Rising” where you can discover artists rising in popularity who Tidal’s curators have selected to feature based on the potential they see in them. Tidal Rising is a great way to discover new artists that are just starting to make their mark in the music industry.
Spotify has pretty much everything Tidal has and more when it comes to music discovery. In addition to algorithm playlists, both Spotify and Tidal have a smorgasbord of editorial playlists that are frequently updated. However, Spotify simply has more playlists for every genre, mood, and activity so there are more options to choose from, and many of these playlists serve a similar function to Tidal Rising by creating exposure for less popular artists.
Winner: Spotify
Tidal vs Spotify: Content
Spotify and Tidal both have clean, dark-themed user interfaces.
Both services offer music, that’s a given, but let’s see where Tidal and Spotify’s content offerings diverge.
Tidal has a larger music catalog, but Spotify’s is more niche
Tidal offers over 60 million tracks whereas Spotify has about 50 million; clearly both have a considerable amount of music. Some artists opt to release exclusive music only to Tidal, sometimes for months, before it is released to the rest of the world. On the other hand, some lesser-known indie music that can be found on Spotify may not be found on Tidal.
Spotify accepts music submissions from anyone, whether it is submitted through a third party distributor such as CDBaby or submitted directly to Spotify. For an indie artist to submit to Tidal, however, they have to submit it through a select few music distributors. If you typically only listen to relatively popular artists, this shouldn’t count against Tidal, but if you’re a fan of true bedroom pop, you may want to go with Spotify.
Podcast fans can get their fix with Spotify, but Tidal has videos
Spotify hosts a large selection of podcasts for all your educational and entertainment needs.
Tidal is focused on musical artists, and so it doesn’t offer many podcasts. With Spotify, you have access to a wide library of podcasts, and a few podcast-specific playback features such as a sleep timer and speed adjuster. However, Spotify doesn’t offer as many podcast-specific features as some of the best podcast apps out there.
Tidal offers over 250,000 videos, many of which are exclusive to Tidal users and which include music videos, filmed live performances, and movies and documentaries about music. Spotify doesn’t have videos, but some songs have short GIFs that display on the player screen during the song.
Tidal has a ton of exclusive artist content
Tidal is a streaming service for the artists. Not only does it pay its artists more per stream than Spotify, they also have in-depth credit pages which outline who contributed to the music and how.
Digital Service Provider | $ Per Stream |
---|---|
Qobuz | $0.04390 |
Peloton | $0.04036 |
iHeartRadio | $0.01426 |
Amazon Unlimited | $0.01175 |
Napster/Rhapsody | $0.01110 |
24/7 Entertainment GmbH | $0.01050 |
YouTube Red | $0.00948 |
Tidal | $0.00927 |
Deezer | $0.00567 |
Google Play | $0.00543 |
Apple | $0.00495 |
KKBox | $0.00435 |
Amazon Digital Services Inc. | $0.00395 |
Spotify | $0.00331 |
Loen | $0.00205 |
Pandora | $0.00155 |
Vevo | $0.00109 |
Yandex LLC | $0.00051 |
YouTube Content ID | $0.00028 |
UMA | $0.00013 |
Tidal also offers its members exclusive artist content. Tidal X is a program for Tidal users that includes exclusive access to live shows, meet and greets, livestreams, concert tickets, and more. Examples of Tidal X events were Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 and Season 4 fashion shows where over 500 Tidal members were allowed to attend and the events were live streamed for all other Tidal members around the world.
- With Tidal, you can browse automatically-generated playlists with a common producer or songwriter.
- By clicking on any of the names under the credits section, you can explore other contributors’ works.
Tidal Rising is a program in which Tidal’s curators select artists rising in popularity who they feel have potential and offer them free support. Artists get professionally photographed, get their music placed on the front page of Tidal, are offered Tour Support, and more. Not only does this feature support musicians in a direct and tangible way, but it’s also a great way for Tidal users to discover new artists that are just starting to make their mark in the music industry.
Spotify has a few similar features such as artist playlists which an artist can make and then add to their profile’s home page, and the Concerts tab which lists the artist’s upcoming shows in your city. Additionally, artists can record exclusive Spotify Singles in Spotify’s studios.
- No matter where you are, you can get recommendations for concerts from Spotify.
- Spotify Singles are exclusive songs recorded and produced within Spotify Studios.
Winner: Draw
Tidal vs Spotify: Streaming quality
If you’re looking for HiFi audio, Tidal is your friend. The Tidal HiFi membership offers four settings for streaming quality: Normal, High, HiFi, and Master Quality Authenticated (MQA). The Normal setting is designed to limit the amount of Internet data being used because streaming high quality files takes up a lot of data. Some users choose only to use the HiFi and MQA settings while hooked up to Wi-Fi. The High setting tops out at 320kbps and uses AAC files. The HiFi setting offers CD-quality lossless FLAC files, meaning they are 44.1kHz/16bit. Master quality audio files are 96kHz/24bit FLAC or WAV files. If a song is labeled as MQA on Tidal, it means that the artist authenticated it themselves, but not all songs are available in this high quality format. Additionally, in order to benefit from HiFi or MQA audio, you need to have good studio headphones.
Tap ESSENTIALS and search for ‘Spotify’. Spotify is installed on your wearable.Once installed you can play directly from your wrist, or to another device with. Tap the Download icon, then ACCEPT AND DOWNLOAD. Cant find spotify gear app. On your mobile, tap Apps. Tap Samsung Gear, then Samsung Galaxy Apps.
Spotify also offers different audio quality settings, but the maximum streaming quality is 320kbps over AAC files, which is the same as Tidal’s High setting.
Streaming Service | Max streaming quality | Supported Formats |
---|---|---|
Qobuz | 24bit / 192kHz | AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, WAV, WMA Lossless |
Amazon Music HD | 24bit /192kHz | FLAC |
Tidal HiFi | 24bit / 96kHz | AAC, ALAC, FLAC |
Deezer HiFi | 16bit / 44.1kHz | FLAC |
Google Play Music | 320kbps | AAC, ALAC, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA |
Deezer Premium | 320kbps | MP3 |
Spotify Premium | 320kbps | AAC, Ogg Vorbis |
Apple Music | 256kbps | AAC |
YouTube Music Premium | 256kbps | AAC |
SoundCloud Go+ | 256kbps | AAC |
Slacker Radio | 320kbps | MP3 |
Pandora | 192kbps | AAC |
Spotify Free | 160kbps | AAC |
Deezer Free | 128kbps | MP3 |
Winner: Tidal
Tidal vs Spotify: Pricing
Tidal is more expensive than Spotify but has higher quality audio.
Tidal offers two tiers for subscriptions. The cheaper of the two is Tidal Premium, which offers maximum 320kbps audio quality via AAC, a lossy file format. With Tidal Premium, you can access exclusive music, videos, events and editorial playlists. The more expensive Tidal subscription is Tidal HiFi, which is the subscription this article of Tidal vs Spotify focuses on. Tidal HiFi offers lossless, high bitrate audio files, Sony 360 Reality Audio, and Dolby Atmos Music in addition to everything Tidal Premium offers. Both Premium and HiFi offer family subscriptions which allow up to six accounts. A 30-day free trial is available for both Tidal Premium and Tidal HiFi. Tidal also has a free plan called Tidal Access but you can only access its live video channels and a few selected radios.
Don’t miss: Free Spotify vs Spotify Premium
Overall, Spotify’s pricing is cheaper, and there is a free version—something Tidal lacks. Spotify also has a 30-day free trial for Spotify Premium. If you want high bitrate lossless audio but don’t want to pay so much for Tidal, try Amazon Music HD.
Premium | Family | Student | Military | First Responders | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tidal 30-day free trial | Free | Free | Free | Free | Free |
Tidal Premium | $9.99/mo | $14.99/mo | $4.99/mo | $5.99/mo | $5.99/mo |
Tidal HiFi | $19.99/mo | $29.99/mo | $9.99/mo | $11.99/mo | $11.99/mo |
Subscription | Price | Features |
---|---|---|
Spotify Free | Free | - Listen to music with ad interruptions - Shuffle music - On-demand playback from 15 Spotify-created playlists |
Spotify Premium Student | $4.99/mo | - Listen to music ad-free - Download music for offline listening - On-demand playback - SHOWTIME and ad-supported Hulu |
Spotify Premium Individual | $9.99/mo | - Listen to music ad-free - Download music for offline listening - On-demand playback |
Spotify Premium Duo | $12.99/mo | - 2 separate Premium accounts for a couple under one roof - Duo Mix: a playlist algorithmically created and updated for both members - Listen to music ad-free - Download music for offline listening - On-demand playback |
Spotify Premium Family | $14.99/mo | - Up to 6 Premium accounts for family members living under one roof - Family Mix: a playlist algorithmically created and updated for all members - Can block explicit music - Spotify Kids: app for kids 12 and under - Listen to music ad-free - Download music for offline listening - On-demand playback |
Winner: Spotify
Tidal vs Spotify: Social features
The Friend Activity section on the right updates as your friends change the song they’re listening to.
If you want the ability to view your friends’ listening activity or playlists, Spotify is the way to go. Spotify has a Friend Activity section which displays the songs your friends are actively listening to along with the album or playlist they are listening from. Unfortunately, this section is only available on the desktop app for Spotify, not the mobile app. You can follow friends by searching their username or by linking your Spotify account with Facebook. However, if you don’t want people to be able to view your Spotify activity, you can always disable the feature that publishes your activity. You have the ability to save your friends’ playlists to your library and create collaborative playlists where multiple friends can add and remove songs. Spotify also has partnerships with Instagram and Tinder, so it’s easy to share your music tastes with people on these apps as well.
As for Tidal, the only semi-social feature is that you can share a song from the Tidal app to your social media profiles, which is also a feature in Spotify.
Winner: Spotify
Spotify Music Quality Level
Tidal vs Spotify: Extra features
Spotify Wrapped shows your end-of-year statistics
In December of every year Spotify releases Spotify Wrapped which is an animation of infographics outlining your listening statistics from the year. These stats include things like how many total minutes you spent listening to music, which artist you listened to most, and which countries your favorite artists are from. Once you’ve viewed your statistics, you can share a card with your top songs and artists to your Instagram Stories to prove to everyone that you have superior music taste.
Spotify allows you to play local files
If you still have MP3 files saved to your computer from the old days and want to be able to listen to them in the same media player as your streamed music, you should get Spotify. Tidal doesn’t allow any local file playback, which is a shame for listeners with vast libraries from the CD-ripping days.
On both Tidal and Spotify, you can download files for offline listening. Keep in mind that if you download a lossless FLAC file on Tidal, it’s probably going to take up a lot of storage space on your device.
Tidal and Spotify have easy car integration
![Spotify download mac Spotify download mac](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133946637/896876151.jpg)
Both Tidal and Spotify are compatible with Apple Carplay and Android Auto so long as your car has that functionality. These enable easier navigation of your music while in the car, but you shouldn’t use them while actively driving. Additionally, Spotify can be integrated with Google Maps and Waze, and Tidal can be integrated with Waze for local control of your music from within the navigation app.
I am using Spotify free and getting ads, which is fine but every 2 or 3 ads, it will get to one and it won't play at all, the play/pause button shows its on play, but timer doesn't move from 0:00, and cannot play music as it says it will play after the ad. Spotify app no adds.
Winner: Spotify
I’m not going to crown an overall winner here because you may like Tidal or Spotify for reasons very particular to your preferences. The key differences between Tidal vs Spotify are these: Tidal is all about the artist-listener relationship whereas Spotify focuses on the listener as an individual who wants to discover new music and share it with their friends. Additionally, Tidal offers high-fidelity audio whereas Spotify does not, but Tidal HiFi is more expensive than Spotify Premium. All in all, both streaming services are popular for good reason, but you’ll have to decide which is the one for you.
Next: Why I’m an avid Spotify user despite dubious audio quality
You may also like
Best music streaming services
YouTube Music vs Spotify
Amazon Echo can now stream Spotify
The Beatles are now available on music streaming services
Spotify inks deal to bring their service to a Starbucks near..
Spotify announces playlist targeting for brands
When the compressed music came out, people reckoned that it was only for some time, that the quality would improve. However, lossy music rapidly gained its admirers due to file's small size. It looked very appealing to be able to store thousands of songs no matter what the quality is. Sadly, compressed music was in favor for quite a while, at least, longer than it should have. As a consequence, musicians waste hours and days in studios re-recording what they think of, quantity has taken over quality and what appeared to be a bliss turned out to be evil.
Digital music streaming services is not a brand-new thing. The problem is that there’s so much music to discover and even though some services say they have some exclusives, most music collections are more or less similar, making possible over 30 million tracks for streaming.
Spotify doesn't need any kind of introduction. If you don't know what it is, you must be living in the Stone Age.
For those who still haven't googled, Spotify is a digital music streaming service that offers access to millions of songs, playlists, and podcasts from artists all over the world. It rapidly extended as a nice streaming service for several reasons:
Today, we are going to share How to Get Free Spotify Premium Account for Lifetime. Contents.Free Spotify Premium Account 2020 (100% Working)Hello Guys, hope you are doing well. https://blocknew593.weebly.com/1-year-free-spotify-premium-2019.html.
- Free subscription with ads.
- Millions of tracks available.
- $9.99 / month .
- Supported in 60 countries.
It seemed like an outstanding service, but the world is now shifting towards Hi-Res music, and Spotify has no victory there. Today I will explain to you why Spotify is already in the past, Spotify Hi-Res is no Hi-Res and suggest a better alternative.
Spotify Sound Quality
Like the rest of music streaming services, Spotify uses compressed audio files so that you can stream and download music without pauses or interruptions. Streams are in OGG (Ogg Vorbis) at 96 kbps on mobile, 160 kbps for so-called 'High' quality on mobile and 320 kbps on mobile and computers for Premium subscribers. These digits are enough to refuse to use the service. If you reckon it makes no difference, you can check out the short-film The Distortion of Sound, where Slash, Snoop Dogg, Michael Shinoda, and the rest will explain in detail why compression is no good for 2017. The worst thing about compressed music is that loudness entirely predominates over the quality thus making the sound more ripped and not exactly what was recorded in a studio. Louder doesn't imply better music experience, and right now is the time we accept it.
https://blocknew593.weebly.com/spotify-app-not-loading-playlists.html. No ads.Don't like navigating the Spotify UI just to open a playlists?
Fortunately, there's a better alternative. VOX Music Player for Mac & iPhone plays most music formats including Hi-Res ones (FLAC, ALAC, WAV, etc.).
![Spotify quality vs amazon Spotify quality vs amazon](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133946637/149109195.jpg)
Spotify Hi-Res
There's been lots of hype around Spotify's announcement about the introduction of so-called Hi-Res Premium account. For extra $5-10 (it randomly varies from account to account) you are offered an opportunity to listen to CD quality at 44.1 KHz/16 bit frequency while real Hi-Res starts at 48 KHz/24 bit. Sure, CD quality is better than compressed OGG but is it worth it? I doubt. The only player able to support playback of such quality is VOX Music Player for Mac & iPhone, where you don't think about the quality because you know for sure what you've uploaded.
Spotify Interface
Spotify should make it more comfortable to find songs because if there's at least one misspelled letter, it would be hard to find what you've been looking for. Another annoying feature is that you can't put the songs in any kind of order which makes it really challenging to find any song. If you are listening to an album, and then add songs one by one, what you eventually have is that exact album but with songs in reversed order. Storing music a bit pain in the ass, so you have to think in advance in what order you want them to be on your added music list.
As an alternative, VOX Music player has its own cloud storage called VOX Music Cloud Storage. It is a limitless cloud which has only one purpose – store all your Hi-Res library thus tackling the problem of Hi-Res file's size. It instantly syncs with you VOX account so you can enjoy the music you have on the cloud. Additional great feature is the option to download songs, which may be useful if you know for certain you won't be having any internet for some time.
Try VOX Music Player with Premium Features Now!
Spotify Radio
What Spotify calls Radio is actually just a set of pre-made playlists of different genres. It is also common that these playlists confuse some algorithms and you have EDM music playing on an Alternative channel. Discovering new music narrows down to Browse. It has dozens of playlists and to know how the playlists work there, read the next section.
For people who tend to explore new music with radio, VOX Music Player makes it possible to listen to more than 30,000 stations from all around the world. It appeals to any taste regardless of the genre or country. You will always find new music and be able to explore new genres with no problems.
Spotify Daily Mix
Playlists, as well as radio, focus on assisting people with exploring previously unknown artists. Spotify has millions of pre-created playlists starting from 'The Best of .. [band's name]' to Top-50 of a country you pick. Unfortunately, Your Daily Mix section is based on what you already have on your music list, so there's little chance to actually discover something new, local or underground. Another flaw of Spotify's playlist is that they usually offer most popular tracks of a particular genre or musician. For example, if you regularly listen to some trip-hop, you will most likely find Portishead, Tricky, Massive Attack and the rest of the genre bests on your Daily Mix.
VOX Player doesn't provide pre-made playlists since we believe playlists are very personal and private. Musicians usually spend hours in studios creating something unique not to be put in one line with hundreds of different artist just because someone decided they sounded alike.
Conclusion: Spotify + Hi-Res?
Normal Vs High Spotify Download Quality Music
Streaming services have made their contribution to humanity, but it's high time we moved into the future, and it's all about Hi-Res music. We strongly encourage you to stop hurting your ears and choose the best alternative to Spotify for your iPhone. VOX Music Player has everything and more and can satisfy the needs of even the most demandable listeners.
Try VOX Music Player with Premium Features Now!
Spotify Download Mac
Start experiencing the best audio player now.