Tidal

Jay Z's new $20 a month lossless-quality streaming service is go as of this evening. At this stage i'm not sure it's even available outside of the US but the official spiel reads as follows

"Panther believes that the recent developments in the entertainment industry, with the migration to music and media streaming, offers great potential for increased entertainment consumption and an opportunity for artists to further promote their music."

-

Interesting to read that Taylor Swift is going to be on it, after her much-publicised dissing of Spotify. Presumably it means they're offering a much fairer shake for the artists.

Anyway..

http://tidal.com/us

How large is the catalogue expected to be?

I think the issue Taylor has with Spotify was that the music is available freely - she's still on plenty of other services that just have radio etc. for free users (which is the most any of them except Spotify offer free users I think?). It looks like this is premium only with a second tier for FLAC streaming.

catalogue-wise there are all manner of interviews and suchlike on the site; Courtney Bartnett, Noel Gallagher etc. what that means though is anyone's guess.

there's an A/B test for lossless streaming, I can't tell the difference tbh http://test.tidalhifi.com/

But will I be able to listen to Fiona Apple on it?

i'm trying to find details on artist compensation/royalties, here's all i've found so far:

“Since our service is double the price of regular market standard streaming services, payouts per user will also be double.” It definitely bears mentioning that payouts are so pitiful, not even doubling them will have enough of an impact, but it’s absolutely a step in the right direction.

Except this thing is going to get way fewer users, so the artists will probably get even less than they do from Spotify.

so there's no free tier for this service right?

the true test is whether they have hounds of love, spotify's greatest omission

US spotify, at least. apparently it's on there in other regions

That hifi test is meaningless on my desktop speakers, which aren't cheap but aren't home theater quality either. I'll stick with Spotify thx.

Yeah if you haven't got there's no point. I've been streaming 320 quality Spotify to a big hi-fi system for some time and it still sounds pretty great, but I'm tempted to give the trial a go.

Haven't got the speakers, was what I meant to say.

just listened to the hifi bit on their site, it strikes me as cheating to kick in the lossless version just as the track started popping off on its own

if spotify goes up to 320 there's no way that 99.9% of people will be able to tell the difference between that and this

a lot of the artifacting in lossy compression is in the really high frequencies that most people can't hear anyway

yeah most people couldn't give a toss about content and sound quality so i guess i can't see why anyone would make the change.

if spotify goes up to 320

spotify is already at 320. at least on mobile anyway.

and most people have never given a toss about sound quality, ever. they heard the beatles on either transistor radios or portable record players with built-in speakers; prince and madonna on cassette tapes on walkmen with $19 headphones; beyonce and kanye west on laptop speakers or apple earbuds. this is one constant that goes back to the beginning of the time. convenience/accessibility matters to most people. sound quality does not.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/237292/all-the-ghostly-sounds-that-are-lost-when-you-compress-to-mp3/

^^^ This was doing the rounds a few weeks ago, so it appears you do actually lose quite a lot in the process. But what you lose is mostly high-end and mostly the end of a note ringing out, after most listeners' ears have moved onto something else in the music. The areas where retaining that sound detail really matters to me - ambient, classical, folk or other sparse acoustic music - are I suspect those least likely to be featured in depth here (initially at least). I'm not sure how much extra benefit you're going to get from listening to Katy Perry or Kanye in lossless when that music has surely been designed to be listened to in MP3.

(I think Spotify only goes up to 320 in premium, and even then you have to manually select it iirc).

(I think Spotify only goes up to 320 in premium, and even then you have to manually select it iirc).

that's all true. and when you do go to your settings to manually select it, the app recommends you stick with a lower quality. i have no idea why. i listen on a (now slightly dated) iphone with (always awful) at&t service, and i've never had any issues with my "extreme" sound quality setting. and, yes, "extreme" is what spotify calls 320k.

i couldn't believe that *so* much info could be missing; especially the intakes of breath etc. i thought there's no way that is the case with say, The Beatles remasters.
but hey wtf do i know.

xp its bc of how much data you burn through on your plan when you listen at higher quality levels via 3G or 4G

also surely if hi-hi systems, PCs, headphones, etc are getting better then aren't we (those of us with half decent headphones, hi-fis) hearing *more* than before not less?
ok so there was 'more' info on a CD or a tape but we were playing them through shitty Sony 80s ghetto blasters and cheap walkmen headphones and car stereos and such, so how much of that 'info' were we actually hearing anyway?

i have no idea why

Disk space + data costs, I guess?

This all reminds me of some godawful BBC documentary recently when they played Steve Albini a Shellac record through an MP3 player for the first time (yeah, right) and he was ostentatiously wincing at how terrible and tinny it sounded. Except they were playing it on the cheapest shittiest white Apple earbuds, on which even the full studio master would sound terrible.

<<ok so there was 'more' info on a CD or a tape but we were playing them through shitty Sony 80s ghetto blasters and cheap walkmen headphones and car stereos and such, so how much of that 'info' were we actually hearing anyway?>>

^^^this

I don't think anyone has ever claimed cassette types are better quality than MP3 fwiw.

*Prays scik mouthy never finds this thread*

and most people have never given a toss about sound quality, ever. they heard the beatles on either transistor radios or portable record players with built-in speakers; prince and madonna on cassette tapes on walkmen with $19 headphones; beyonce and kanye west on laptop speakers or apple earbuds. this is one constant that goes back to the beginning of the time. convenience/accessibility matters to most people. sound quality does not.

― fact checking cuz, Monday, March 30, 2015 4:31 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think with the rise of the mini-boom in audio heralded by Beats you have people caring about """sound quality""", I mean when even the lex is harping about not being able to find 320 kbps mp3s of songs he likes you gotta admit there's been at least some rising of the water level

I do live under a rock but this is the first I heard about Tidal (on Twitter):

Haxan Cloak ✔ @haxan_cloak
This is so shameful. Thanks for not getting in touch and ripping me off, Tidal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k265USTK9wo …
Please retweet!

mini-boom in audio heralded by Beats

huh? a service that hardly anyone has, and that even if you do have it designed to be played thru your iphone headphones? how is that a mini-boom in audio?

Audio equipment - did you hear of anybody paying $200 for headphones 10 years ago?

News about that meeting leaked out a few weeks ago:
http://www.showbiz411.com/2015/03/13/exclusive-jay-z-had-secret-pow-wow-with-music-superstars-including-beyonce-madonna-kanye-coldplay-to-start-renegade-streaming-service

Audio equipment - did you hear of anybody paying $200 for headphones 10 years ago?

ha, sorry, i thought you were talking about the beats streaming service.

but even so, no -- i think people who pay $200 for beats headphones are buying marketing and logos, not sound quality. that's a fashion boom, not an audio boom.

That Haxan Cloak hissy fit is hilarious imo.

Eh, part of the sell is the 'audio quality'

maaaannn this press conference is the height of hilarity

Like, good enough for Dr. Dre to use in the studio! xxp

deadmaus has opposable thumbs. who knew?

(xp) check out a few studios that aren't run by people who own beats, and see how many of them are using beats headphones.

How come the Tidal press conference looks like a Scientology speech

http://i.imgur.com/hFKgy56.png

http://i.imgur.com/3K1Aayv.jpg

(xp) check out a few studios that aren't run by people who own beats, and see how many of them are using beats headphones.

― fact checking cuz, Monday, March 30, 2015 5:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Lol why are you telling me this

because you're using beats-in-real-music-studios as a defense of the brand!

xxp i mean some of those folks are scientologists right?

I can't even believe that your reading comprehension is so poor

You've been on this board for a minute

Take a step back from the computer dude

xp

what am i not comprehending? feel free to let me know while i take a step back.

Is their catalog like Spotify or like Pono?

Rly weird how many celebrities're changing profile pics etc and going out of their way to promote this, guess it's an Illuminati thing

https://www.dn.no/staticprojects/special/2018/05/09/0600/dokumentar/strommekuppet/

looks like a scandal!

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/did-tidal-falsify-streams-to-bulk-up-kanye-west-and-beyonce-numbers/

Record companies used to buy millions of lps to guarantee their success

Not much has changed

Well, now they're actively taking money from other artists to give their own.

this is fraud, right?

this is on top of them already giving "free albums" to all their subscribers? hah the music industry is such shit these days at least with radio payola people still bought albums.

it is fraud, yes

hard to imagine how anyone could have thought they would get away with it - wonder if Jay Z authorized this...

He either knew or should have known. I think the more thorny question is how much Kanye and Beyoncé knew. If the figures are right, it should be hundreds of thousands of dollars that they've personally gotten, right?

Another TIDAL subscriber, music critic Geir Rakvaag, supposedly played tracks from Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo 96 times in a single day – with 54 plays in the middle of the night.

are you suggesting that there's some kind of... geirbot involved

Another TIDAL subscriber, music critic Geir Rakvaag, supposedly played tracks from Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo 96 times in a single day – with 54 plays in the middle of the night.

― Closed Beta (NotEnough), 9. maj 2018 16:26 (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, and he is supposed to have heard 27 songs at once at 2:00 and 27 at once at 5:00. It's obviously wrong.

once they started counting streams in the charts i figured it was only a matter of time before they had the equivalent of World of Warcraft Chinese gold farms, like somewhere on the other side of the globe in the back of a cell phone repair shop is a wall of phones listening to albums 24/7.

Pump and dump...
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/23/sprint-to-buy-33-percent-stake-in-tidal.html

(that was from 2017, but 33% of nothing...)

wow@ that article. it's quite exciting!

I've been subscribing for a while now....the discovery/organization isn't even close to Spotify and the app can be a little janky.

However, using it with my good headphones and Dragonfly or streaming into a DAC on my home stereo, the sound quality is FAR better thank Spotify's highest tier, like not even close

yeah the app is p awful

what’s Dragonfly?

portable DAC

app is getting slightly better...though now i basically keep spotify for listing in the car/headphones on the go....then use spotify to discover stuff and then listen to it on my nice headphones at work or at home on tidal

I hate Tidal so much. They don’t differentiate between any 90s indie band vs any 2020s mumble-rapper who took the same name. Even a search for “trashcan sinatras” vs. “trash can sinatras” will get you wildly different results.

treated myself to a new amp and speakers in the office. also got a free apple music subscription with my xbox.
trying to figure out the best way to get the highest quality music through my system. options are xbox via optical, OSX to amp via bluetooth 5.0, OSX or iOS to amp via chromecast audio. apple music can't cast to the CCA via iOS or OSX. you can cast spotify but it's limited quality. was thinking maybe I should just drop spotify for tidal then I could at least cast their CD quality streams to the amp. why you can't cast apple music to CCA is beyond me...

They really need to sort out their cataloguing. Listening to an album by 70's folkie Charles Brown and the "more from this artist" tab has a bunch of albums by 50's R&B vocalist Charles Brown. Worse, earlier it presented me with a "songwriter mix" which thought the Peter Brown who wrote "Material Girl" was the same guy who wrote "Sunshine Of Your Love". Don't get me wrong, that would be awesome if true - but it is not.

Listening to an album by 70's folkie Charles Brown and the "more from this artist" tab has a bunch of albums by 50's R&B vocalist Charles Brown.

Thought you were going to say it suggested Vince Guaraldi…

My wife uses Tidal… their curated playlists are really good

There’s a series called “Tracks & Traces,” for specific artists (lots of big names from various genres), full of songs that reflect both their “inspirations” and artists that they inspired.

Like just to pick a totally random example…

https://i.imgur.io/F9BSTUI_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

Hard not to be satisfied by selections like these

Anyone tried live sessions? Listening or streaming? I would love to hear other folks' sessions!

Loved Tidal until it started bugging out after never ever bugging out. Also it was downloading EVERY SONG I PLAYED (?!) Whether I wanted to or not.

Tried using offline, everything.

Phone was essentially telling me to delete the app it's fucked, but clearing the cache worked beautifully.

Just a heads up.

Also: "ban track" is really nice. Every service should have it. But why does not every track have this function?

I use it on my laptop and the only thing I don't like is the way it creates a playlist based on the album I just finished listening to, and spews random songs at me until I get irritated and search up a different album.

Yeah their algorithms are pretty shit I guess they will continue to suck until they get more subscribers.

Surely you can turn that off… try Settings, Disable autoplay or something

you can turn it off in exactly that way yes

tbh the ui doesn’t help

The UI is pretty willful. I've been trying for months to get it not to launch automatically when I turn on my laptop, but it's just gonna do whatever the fuck it wants.

Were there ever any repercussions for the (former?) boss corruptly swiping other artists' streaming cash for himself and his wife? I'm guessing not.

Yeah their algorithms are pretty shit I guess they will continue to suck until they get more subscribers.

Weirdly, I've found the "radio" playlists to be better than the ones I had with Spotify. Spotify felt like it was doing stuff tailored for me personally, which meant I was often getting the same tracks, while with Tidal I keep getting different stuff, but still generally pretty good. The general "Discovery" playlist isn't as good as Spotify's though.

Oh yeah a while ago I was looking at my phone storage and somehow Tidal was taking up more space than existed on my previous phone, I ended up deleting and reinstalling it.

Yeah, I'm staying with it because the sound quality is superior for the money, the royalty rate is better and there isn't all this podcast bullshit.

But I have had to uninstall a few times.

I have to remember how horrid Spotify was in its early years.

As for the quality of the radio...I just make all of my playlists on Spotify and then move them to Tidal.

Increasingly getting tips on joints from places like Mixcloud instead.

There’s a few things it needs to do then it’d be perfect. Search function is not great, no search by year, label etc. Doesn’t seem to be able to search others playlists, or even my own. Most annoyingly if you play an album I can’t add another album to play queue, only has a play next option.

Despite that going to stick with it for reasons IML gave.

I like the videos option too, though is a bit spotty in coverage with huge gaps in some artists. Hi R.E.M.

Desktop app, Mac OS. If I pause playback and don't come back to it within a few minutes, the app loses its place and playback goes back to the beginning of the track. BAD TIDAL. At least it doesn't go back to the beginning of the album I guess.

just switched over from spotify. transferred over my playlists and realising that its japanese music selections are pretty limited. also every song title is romanised which I guess makes it easier for searching but is not great for people like me who have gotten used to recognising them by their japanese characters. not great for last.fm stats either.

but am gonna try to stick to it and hope it gets better. jpop took time to have a solid presence on spotify too in the beginning

I found that, too - either the catalog is more limited or Spotify's massive playlist count just makes stuff easier to find.

nice:

https://www.techhive.com/article/2254350/tidal-combines-hifi-and-hifi-plus-plans.html

I guess once that rolls out I'll give it a listen and see if I can tell the difference.

Wow - I may ditch Amazon and get on a family plan with my wife’s Tidal account

Nice little email to wake up to

Less good news for DJs, the new surcharge for use with DJing software takes the price back up to the old Hifi-Plus tier.

Can you save mixes if you use the Tidal DJ option?