Wow. I guess the UI is less of an issue than their overall functionality. Search is broken which makes music discovery on Tidal so difficult.
I would love to use tidal but the few problems I have make it an absolute no go.
Is quobuz any better? I feel like Spotify has a lot of the UX locked down.
Haven’t tried Qobuz, but after research Amazon is the only service that has the bulk in 16/44. Plus I use on iPhone, Mac desktop, iPad and Apple TV, Tidals UI/UX was a plus for me, great on the big screen. But I went through all 3 last night and compared my .wavs that I produced against streaming and I was shocked by how good Amazon is. I’m chasing sound quality above all else, I can get used to/learn a UI…
Qobuz is actually fine, it’s like an under-developed version of Spotify’s UI with a few candies thrown in for audiophiles and classical listeners. It’s not horrible to use at all, just still not spotify. A few issues:
It hangs up a lot on offline tracks. Not sure why. Other users online have stopping and hung up issues randomly for no discernable reason sometimes. Not a huge deal since it only happens with some tracks that you’ve favorited and made available offline, doesn’t happen with tracks you already had on your pc or are just streaming. I think it’s a caching issue.
Everything is white, bright white. White, bright, bright white bright fucking everywhere. Painful to use at night, no night or dark mode.
There is no customization, and everything is accessed from a toolbar at the top of the screen. I love how Spotify has all my stuff at the left side of the screen, I can see all my playlists and go to specific browsing menus and find stuff much more quickly. Things are harder to organize in qobuz and you kinda have to dig for it. The favorites menu is just an endless grid of album art and the playlist menu is the same. The small organization tools that Spotify has aren’t that meaningful until they’re gone.
I’m still on my free trial of it and figuring out if I like it.
While I’m here, can somebody explain MQA and Tidal to me? I have no idea what MQA encoding is.
So I’m sitting here in my chair in front of my TV which is outputting Bluetooth SBC to the BTR five, Sennheiser 58x and I can switch instantly on Apple TV to the same song on Tidal and then on Amazon music HD and it is noticeably louder on Amazon HD and some stuff I can instantly hear the quality difference and this is Bluetooth I’m honestly sold on Amazon at this point
I utilize Qobuz for the best quality of sound listening in bit perfect playback, I use AmazonMusicHD for some of the entertainment features and growing selection, I made a video on what I like about AmazonMusicHD.
Amazon Music HD, Hi Res Music Streaming New King? https://youtu.be/XQeO8MOlwnk
Then I use Spotify when gaming, on the go, or for discovering music as they have to me what seems to be the best discover features.
Spotify cuz I also get Hulu with it lol
If you haven’t checked out Tidal yet:
I think Clementine is the standard on Linux, I use a fork of it called Strawberry. There’s also one called Lollypop if you want something a bit more visual, the GUI is quite close to something like Amazon’s music player or Spotify.
Clementine doesn’t really do ALSA (Linux ASIO/WASAPI) so no bit perfect… theyve admitted they don’t care about audiophiles
I paid $3 for 3 months of tidal to once again a/b test against Spotify premium.
The only place I hear any difference at all in quality is on master tracks. And there it’s pretty clear that there is an advantage to tidal.
It’s shocking to me that Spotify is able to deliver not only excellent sound quality, but also an amazing user experience. I discover new music every day. It keeps me interested and listening.
I don’t think I’ll continue to pay for tidal after the trial
Before I make a long post, is piracy a taboo topic here?
Would prefer if it’s not encouraged here lol
Dually noted.
To respond to the OP, I’m a long time Spotify premium user.
To any new Spotify users make sure to check the changelog/forums before updating (for all clients). Spotify, while great, has a tendency to either mess up releases with bugs or take away features with no notification. Generally if you don’t update it will still work and you won’t have the headache. The desktop does auto update though, so if you reboot your computer you may not have an option.
Otherwise… I, uh, acquire my favorite most listened to albums in flac and use my plex server for streaming it.
Hard copy for the most part.
If you use an Android phone with a dongle DAC I honestly recommend usb audio player Pro, it’s expensive for an Android app at around 8 dollars and has notable hiccups (I have to use the 2.4 GHz range for tidal streaming to really work). But it leads to bit perfect audio and is compatible with qobuz and tidal (and great for my LG)
I’ve been using Tidal and recently boosted to the HiFi grade. I really like it. Given my tastes I’d be better off with Primephonic, but I share my account with my 14-yr old son, who has TRASH music taste :). And sometimes I want to rock out.
Mainly Tidal Hi-Fi, i have a family account that i share with my mom and 4 friends, ends up being very cheap for us, i also keep some CDs i really like, i usually rip them as FLACs as well.
All I’ll say is YAR HAR YAR HAR A PIRATES LIFE FOR MEEEEEE
I reluctantly get my music from Spotify. I hate the interface, but when I did trials for the other big ones (Qobuz, Tidal, Amazon) I found that the interfaces are mostly the same and I hated them all. Plus I have a Duo subscription with my gf so at least it’s kinda cheap. Luckily I don’t hear the difference between lossless and 320Kbps, so that saves a ton of money 
.