Taking a Look at Tidal

As mentioned in a previous blog, Tidal is a new music-streaming platform introduced by artist Jay-Z. Tidal’s capabilities consist of high quality music, music videos, artist profile and promotions of upcoming artists. I became very curios of the platforms when I heard that its launch was not well-received and resulted in negative feedback. So, I began my research.

At a face level, what are some of the Pros:

+ Great Sound Quality

+ HD Videos

+ Available on all Operating Systems

and the Cons:

- HI FI Membership Costs $19.99 Per Month

- Music Library Gaps

- Competition with Spotify

As I continued my browsing of article about user reviews and feedback, I began to pull the conclusion that Tidal is the perfect platform for those who value high quality sound and video. The suburb quality of the music files that Tidal offers is a gold mine for the user who really values quality audio. This high quality music and video is only accessible through a Tidal Hi Fi membership, which will put you back nearly $20 every month.

This is really where Tidal stands out from the competition. However, this is what caused the extreme back lash when Tidal was first launched. Since then, the standard Tidal membership, $9.99 a month, has been added to Tidal’s platform. This matches the membership price for Tidal’s main competitor, Spotify. What is different about Tidal’s two memberships is that the standard membership reduces the sound and video quality to standard 320kbps bitrate. This is the exact same quality that Spotify offers their music at which then makes the playing field pretty even between the two.

During my research I came across this Buzzfeed article that collected a series of tweets from Jay-Z shortly after the rough Tidal launch. His tweets explain how Tidal continues to develop and that many groundbreaking programs didn’t experience over night success. Read Jay’s tweets here.

Overall, I’m not yet sold on getting either a Spotify or Tidal account. I personally like to buy full albums on the occasion on iTunes or just listen to music off of Pandora or YouTube. I  am really interested to see how Tidal tries to come back from the rough start and to how it plans to develop and differentiate itself from other music streaming services.