Preference for Tidal's sound quality, yet desire for a more intuitive and accessible user interface.
Revamped Version
Saying goodbye to Spotify wasn't an easy choice, but its rising prices and the elusive promise of hi-res audio pushed me to embrace the five-star arms of Tidal. With a quality that outshines Spotify and a collection of music to die for, Tidal has been my savior.
Yet every honeymoon period comes with its hurdles, especially in the realm of usability and accessibility – areas where Tidal struggles to keep up with its competitors. Despite the top-notch sound and extensive music library, Tidal still feels like a platform designed by those who overlook the user experience.
User-Friendliness: The Missing Piece
Before I became a Spotify subscriber, I was a faithful member of Apple's Club. Initially, this wasn’t the streaming service Apple Music, but the built-in iTunes platform where your saved and downloaded files could be played on any device seamlessly.
Apple's system remains the best in my book – it offers an incredibly logical manner to access your favorite tunes, artists, or albums. Let's take three tracks from Muse's derided debut Showbiz, for example; they are Uno, Overdue and Sunburn.
With Apple Music, you have three hassle-free ways to locate them:
- Go to Artists (Muse), which will take you to each album from which you have any tracks.
- Access Albums directly, and you'll find the same result.
- Look at your full song list, and voila! The same three tunes will be neatly organized by title, date added, or artist.
Unfortunately, Tidal isn't as organized. Its system unnecessarily separates tracks, albums, and artists into separate entities, making it harder to find what you're looking for. If you've liked those Muse tracks, they'll appear in your Track List, but finding Showbiz isn’t as straightforward as it should be.
You have to 'like' the whole album for anything to appear under the Album section of your Liked Music. Even then, you'll need to go through each track individually and like them to see them in your separate list of Liked Tracks.
Things get clunky when it comes to downloading tunes, too. Spotify makes it effortless; just hit the download button, and your tracks are saved onto your device. But Tidal forces you to save playlists, albums or collections like on Spotify, but a single song that you want saved for your offline playlist? Alas, that's not possible.
To make matters worse, there are certain tunes that have been stuck, refusing to move, and jamming my playlists like a wrench in a gearbox. "Why not just delete the songs causing the issue and move on?" you might ask. Unfortunately, Tidal demands that you delete all your downloads and start again.
CarPlay Complications
Adding to playlists is similarly underwhelming. Apple simplifies this task by providing a simple 'add music' option that takes you to your music library in 'add mode.' You can quickly and easily add any track you like to your chosen playlist, much like shopping at the neighborhood grocery store.
Tidal, on the other hand, insists on doing things manually. Every time you want to add a track, you have to browse the platform as usual and select the song, then choose "add to playlist," and find the one you desire. That's an extra three steps.
And I haven't even started on the CarPlay. My daily commute has given me ample time to assess Spotify's implementation of the audio sharing platform, and I must say its performance is nearly flawless, with no glitches or glaring omissions.
Change to Tidal has been painful, especially when it came to key features like skipping tunes or accessing a full album with a single click, missing from its repertoire. To use a car analogy, Spotify's implementation is a sporty, well-tuned Jaguar, while Tidal performs more like a mid-range Honda Civic.
On the Verge of Excellence
The frustration lies in the fact that Tidal is almost there, needing just a couple of small improvements to become excellent. I understand that making changes to an interface takes time and dedication from developers, but Tidal still has plenty of room for improvement in the user experience department.
To use a real-life example, I recently spoke to engineers at Ruark about the challenges of dealing with multiple fonts and languages on a basic digital radio display, and believe me, it requires a lot of hard work.
The quality is all there, but without a platform people feel comfortable using, Tidal won't reach its full potential. While it’s not far from the user-friendly benchmarks established by its rivals, there's still room for polishing the user interface and simplifying the browsing experience to appeal to a wider audience.
The message is simple: style matters as much as substance when it comes to user experience.
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[1] Comparing Spotify and Tidal: Pros and Cons[2] Why Apple Music Is the Best Streaming Service[3] The Rise and Fall of Pandora and the Era of Streaming Music[4] Better Music Discovery: Emerging Trends and Technologies
- The revamped version I've adopted, Tidal, offers an impressive audio quality, surpassing Spotify's, but the user-friendliness is a missing piece that needs improvement.
- Navigating Tidal's system is more complex than Apple's, making it harder to find songs or albums, unlike the seamless experience of iTunes.
- Tracks, albums, and artists are unnecessarily separated in Tidal, compared to the well-organized presentation on Apple Music.
- Tidal demands more steps to add tracks to playlists, unlike Apple Music's straightforward 'add music' option.
- My daily commute has highlighted Tidal's CarPlay limitations, as it falls short of Spotify's flawless implementation of audio sharing.
- Tidal's user interface needs polishing and simplification to match the user-friendly benchmarks established by its rivals in the streaming industry.
- Technology advancements and the popularity of streaming services have sparked debates about the future of entertainment, such as the Netflix CEO's perspective on the future of cinemas.
- Previewing the upcoming High End Munich 2025 show, we can expect a variety of cutting-edge hi-fi brands showcasing their new headphone and audio technology products.
