In digital times, streaming services have become popular very quickly. The convenience they have brought to people’s lives is great, but beyond that, most people would like to listen to their favorite music in excellent quality, just like on CDs. Usually, when we talk about high sound quality, Tidal comes to mind immediately. However, does Tidal have the best sound quality compared to other similar services?
Specifics of Tidal service
Well, Tidal’s main accent is the use of FLAC, a lossless compression format. The service distances itself from competitors such as:
- Beats Music;
- Spotify;
- and more recently Beatport.
All these applications use MP3. Of course, some services offer FLAC as downloadable content, but you should agree that streaming in this quality is definitely more convenient.
Of course, you have to pay the appropriate price for that, and that’s why Tidal’s price range is higher than its competitors’ subscription plans. A premium subscription with MP3-streaming at 320 KBPS costs $9.99 a month, a Hi-Fi package with lossless audio you can buy for $19.99. Another key nuance of Tidal is the lack of a premium segment, which deprives the potential audience of the Jay-Z service to listen to the stream for free. In comparison, Spotify offers a subscription for $10 a month (students pay $5 at all) but provides a parallel free listening service with ads.
Of course, the most important feature of Tidal is the form of ownership and co-owners: the controlling package of shares is owned by real performers, and not by typical IT investors.
There are different opinions of most industry observers and critics about Tidal service. Some persons see Tidal as a beneficial application to the music industry – even if it fails, while others recommend spending money on live concerts instead of this “nonsense”.
Generally, the fact that Tidal uses FLAC, brings the project of Jay-Z to the dangerous line of heated but useless debate over “is high-quality audio valuable or useless after all”. The discussion is very old: can we feel the difference between FLAC and MP3?
There are no winners and no losers in this debate, just the right, and the wrong conditions. If you’re going to listen to FLAC files on default headphones while jogging, there’s no sense in such audio. If you’re at home in a quiet environment and decide to reread old items from your music library on good speakers, HQ audio can make your evening enjoyable enough.
In any case, if you ever feel like switching from your old music service to a new one to experience the quality of the sound, MusConv can help. We work with 50+ platforms and can transfer all your favorite tracks, albums, and playlists.