Spotify vs Tidal – (In-Depth) Comparison

Spotify offers a wide range of premium features, including podcasts, custom playlists, and time stamp sharing, among many others. Some streaming services are trying to lay down Spotify, despite Spotify capturing most of the music streaming era. Tidal Music is also competing with Spotify, among other Music streaming services. In this guide, we’ll compare Spotify vs Tidal Music and examine which service has the most potential.

spotify vs tidal

It has been four to five years since I used both applications, and both have worked well for me. Both Spotify applications offer podcasts, playlists, different artists, offline listening, and more. Before declaring a winner, I will analyze the different features of Spotify and Tidal and see which wins. However, You can also check my latest post which is written on Spotify vs Pandora.

Spotify vs Tidal – Music Quality

The quality of Music should be top-notch if you want to enjoy any music, podcasts, or song. Make sure the music quality is good before choosing a music streaming platform. In this section, I will compare both streaming platforms based on their music quality. Let’s get started.

Let’s start with Spotify’s music quality. There are five different music qualities that Spotify offers to its premium subscribers. Automatic (depends on your internet speed/quality), Low (24 kbps), Normal (96 kbps), High (160 kbps), and Very High (320 kbps). You can listen to any music quality if you are a premium user.

In contrast, Tidal offers higher-quality Music than Spotify. Four types of quality are available to users on Tidal. Normal (96 kbps), High (320 kbps), HiFi (1411 kbps), and Master quality (up to 9216 kbps).

Streaming quality is much better on Tidal than on Spotify, so Tidal is the best choice if you want high quality.

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User Interface

When switching to a streaming platform, the user interface (UI) is the most important factor to consider. So check the UI for neatness, cleanliness, and clarity before switching platforms. Here I will compare the User Interfaces of both platforms.

PlatformsMusic CatalogueTimestamp SharingPersonal PlaylistsSmart Algorithm
Spotify80 MillionYesYesYes
Tidal85 millionNoYesYes

Tidal: Tidal’s desktop app is very smooth and easy to use. On the desktop version, you can create playlists, listen to songs, and perform other activities via a sidebar. To create a playlist, drag and drop any song.

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Spotify: Spotify has almost the same features as well. On the desktop version of Spotify, you can drag and drop songs to create or delete playlists. Additionally, Spotify offers a variety of filters. Any song or album can be searched by the artist’s name.

Content

There is competition between both platforms when it comes to content. There are around 85 million songs on both Spotify and Tidal. It’s a really large number.

On both platforms, the number of songs is growing every day. There are awesome podcasts and songs on Spotify that are well worth the price, but on the other hand, there is 360 Reality Audio on Tidal. Almost all artists are available on both platforms, so that you can listen to them on either. 

Plans & Pricing

Music streaming platforms have almost the same plans. Spotify and Tidal Music’s plans are summarized in the table below.

PlatformFree PlanIndividualFamily
SpotifyYes$9.99/month$15.99/month
Tidal HiFiYes$9.99/month$14.99/month
Tidal HiFi PlusNo$19.99/month$29.99/month

Both platforms offer the following in their premium plans:

  • Ads-free listening
  • 30 days free trial
  • Offline Listening
  • Premium content
  • Social sharing
  • Streamless tracks

Further, Spotify offers 320kbps streaming quality for premium subscribers, while Tidal offers 9216 kbps streaming quality. I recommend Spotify if you want high-quality features in a limited amount of time per month.

Also Read: Spotify vs Apple Music

Additional Features

There are thousands of premium features available on both platforms. Below are a few of them.

  • Spotify allows you to import any local song. As of now, Tidal does not have this feature.
  • There are no additional details about any song on Spotify, but on Tidal, there is almost all of the information about each song that is recorded.
  • Compared to Tidal, Spotify has a stronger algorithm.
  • The timestamp-sharing feature is available on Spotify, while Tidal is still working on it.
  • Tidal has good music discovery, but Spotify has a lot of additional content.

Conclusion

In this guide, you’ll find almost all the information about Spotify and Tidal Music. The information provided in this article will help you determine which platform has the most potential. Let me know in the comments if you want more information on this topic just like Spotify vs SoundCloud.