Paulina Joaristi Comm 200April 8, 2015Blog Post

Media Matters

Tidal vs Spotify: What is the big difference?

April 8, 2015

Spotify is a popular music streaming service that was launched in October 2008 by a Swedish startup.

Spotify encourages people to pay for music by subscribing and paying a monthly fee. Spotify premium gives you access to all sorts of music even when you have no internet available. However, you can also use it without paying but it will not work when you are offline.

Users can create, edit, and share playlists with all of your friends. Spotify also allows individuals to integrate their account with Facebook and Twitter, making it easy and entertaining to listen to music while using social media.

Earlier this week famous American rapper and music producer, Jay-Z launched Tidal, a high quality music streaming service that will soon become Spotify’s competition.

Jay-Z was accompanied by great artists including: Alicia Keys, Usher, Beyonce, Rihanna, Madonna, Kanye West and others.

According to The Independent news website, Tidal is promoting itself by promising high quality music to users. Songs will be offered in 1411 Kbps FLAC which, is far above CD quality.

Variety blog published this statement on March 30th. “Our goal is simple: We want to create a better service and a better experience for both fans and artists,” Alicia Keys said at the event. “We believe that it is in everyone’s interests — fans, artists and the industry as a whole — to preserve the value of music, and to ensure a healthy and robust industry for years to come.”

Tidal was launched with the hashtag #TIDALforALL and currently has 73.4K followers on Twitter.

So who will take over the music streaming industry? Spotify or Tidal?

Although Tidal is being backed by a big group of music celebrities this doesn’t guarantee success. It is a well-known fact that celebrity endorsement and star power can really affect the public’s opinion on a company, but I don’t believe this will be enough to ruin Spotify who has been in the market for eight more years than Tidal and has a good market.

Tidal is a high quality service but it is also an expensive one. They will not offer a free version of their service, which I believe will damage their ability to attract new users.

After all music has been popular since the beginning of time because it is readily available to everyone, easy to enjoy, and most importantly, free to listen to. An annual subscription to Tidal will cost around $120. Seems a bit much for a music service…

Both apps look highly similar. They have black backgrounds, vivid pictures of artists, songs and albums and have the ability to create playlists.

Spotify has a Windows Phone app that Tidal doesn’t have and a tie with Speaker firm Sonos. For me the choice is simple. I will remain being a loyal customer of Spotify.

By Paulina Joaristi

(466 words)