Tidal

2026-01-31 Tags: software

If you're looking to cut Spotify out of your life for being evil and increasingly shitty, so far Tidal has been a great less evil and less shitty alternative.

I originally mostly listened to music in iTunes, where I would buy my favorite songs (and less often full albums), and I would discover new music using a mix of pandora, youtube, and reddit.com/r/listentothis (the latter caught Bastille's Pompeii, Hozier, and Gotye before they blew up, for hipster cred).

When itunes changed to apple music it started getting worse with each update.

We then had a Spotify pro family plan for a few years, and I liked the instant easy access to all the music I could want, and sometimes found cool stuff in Spotify's recommendations playlists, but I accumulated a number of gripes:

• Spotify forces you to sync your listening session across devices, which is pretty annoying if you want a podcast on your personal laptop, meditation music on your phone, and techno on your work computer. I'm convinced this is actually an anti password sharing check and not a "feature".
• Spotify doesn't pay artists enough.
• Recommendations tend to hyper focus, if they think you like a certain thing, and prioritize artists who produce tons of new music.
• The recent breaking point was spotify filling our discovery queues with 50% AI slop music, under "verified" accounts. It was super weird to try tracking down the artist elsewhere, find AI generated instagram photos, and end up only being able to rely on tiktok profiles that require "AI artist" labels for proof.

Anyways, for now we're on Tidal, and so far it solves the above complaints, and I've found a number of new bands through broader recommendations.

They also had a great integration to pull your spotify likes and playlists over for you, which otherwise might have been a lock in deal breaker.

Only minor complaints so far:

• The app is a bit slower and buggier.
• It's more focused on having playlists and a few clicks harder to find and shuffle your full track list.

I'm kind of wondering if I should also start buying my favorite songs in apple music again though, to support the artists more and ensure I own access to the music forever.