Is Tidal Doomed?

The music streaming business is harsh. Spotify is at the top, but though it’s popular and inexpensive, it’s not a good service. Over time, the Swedish company has pivoted towards podcasts and videos, demoting music and pushing new gimmicky features like boring AI-recommendation playlists. The audio quality is also subpar, as Spotify heavily compresses their files. There is supposed to be an uncompressed “Spotify Hi-Fi” incoming, but it was announced in February 2021 and will likely cost approximately $20 monthly.Music quality is the key selling feature of Tidal: the streaming service widely launched by Jay Z in 2015, bought by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2021, and beloved by DJs worldwide. Unlike Spotify, Tidal doesn’t compress its audio files. If you listen on headphones or speakers connected to a DAC and AMP, you’re hearing the music to the original recording as possible.I prefer listening to music on vinyl, but if you want to hear the clearest, most perfect version of a track, you need the digital recording. And even if you’re listening over Bluetooth, if you’re wearing good enough headphones, you can distinguish whether you’re listening to the compressed Spotify version or the uncompressed original.Tidal’s founding focus on music quality shapes everything else around the app. There are no podcasts, radio shows, or videos — except for music videos. There are no flashy pop-ups or distracting experiments, and they are not trying to sell you to advertisers. The whole service is about providing you with the music you want to listen to, without issues, for a monthly price and nothing more. Less is more, and whereas Spotify is frustratingly overcomplicated, Tidal is refreshingly simple.Just because it’s focused on music doesn’t mean it’s simple or unrefined, though. It has the most stylish interface of any streaming service — focusing on dark colors, transparent text, and album art — and has the best playlists of any streaming service. If you want to get into a genre or find some new small artists, Tidal beats everyone. The only interface issues are its somewhat ugly, poorly designed widgets and the LIVE feature, which users can disable but shouldn’t even be there.The biggest issue with Tidal — and one that I can’t understand — is that its library has some weird holes. Some singles don’t appear on Tidal, and whole albums available to stream everywhere else are incomplete on Tidal. The most notable for me is Tobe Nwigwe’s incredible debut album, moMINTS, which only has a few tracks available on Tidal. It’s understandable for some obscure, older records, but that was a relatively popular rap album released in 2021.The other issue is that you can’t favorite or “like” more than 10,000 tracks. That sounds like a comically large number, but if you’ve been listening to streamed music for years, and extensively using the like feature — to train the algorithm and mark favorite songs on an album — then it’s easy to hit that cap. I have, and there’s nothing to do at that point.Otherwise, Tidal is a great product, but it’s not a great business. It’s a money-loser for parent company Block, and they’ve had repeated rounds of layoffs, with the most recent occuring this month. Are they guaranteed to kill the brand? No, but this is a tough market. They have continued to slash Tidal’s team, and there’s little Block can do to change their financials or make their product stand out.If Spotify were the only competitor, then at least they’d have the price advantage over Spotify’s rumored upcoming Hi-Fi tier. But Apple Music also exists, and that service has taken a lot of Tidal’s best features. Like Tidal, it’s music focused, has uncompressed audio, and has a pleasant interface. But, unlike Tidal, it could lose money indefinitely, and Apple wouldn’t care because it’s part of their bundle, and Apple just has so much cash.Tidal could survive. It may have enough dedicated fans or provide some new, innovative features that convince many people to subscribe. I re-subscribed earlier this year, wanting to believe in Tidal and loving the service. But with news of further layoffs, I canceled my subscription, paid FreeYourMusic to transfer my music library, and re-subscribed to Apple Music. And if many subscribers do the same, then Tidal is already dead.

Is Tidal Doomed?

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