The way we consume music today has completely changed thanks to streaming services. Instead of owning music, whether digital or physical, we now prefer to play any content without having to buy anything. There are currently a multitude of options to choose from, but today we are going to focus on two in particular: Spotify and Tidal.
Every time a platform raises the price of its subscriptions, it causes a big mess. It already happened with Netflix, with Disney + and now it’s Spotify’s turn. The famous music service announced a month ago that it would raise its prices, because despite increasing in users, its profits did not reflect it. This has caused many to rush to find alternatives to Spotify. Will this situation serve to give a boost to Tidal?
What is Tidal?
Like Spotify, Tidal is a music subscription service founded in 2014 by the company Aspiro. Part of its appeal lies in the high quality of its videos and songs. Tidal burst onto the scene in 2015 after being acquired by the famous rapper Jay-Z and represented a paradigm shift in the world of music streaming, at least in monetary terms. Through a spot featuring big names such as Madonna, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Daft Punk, Tidal was presented as an alternative to Spotify, fairer to creators and with better economic compensation.
Price and catalog
In terms of price, we are not going to deceive you: there are no abysmal differences between the two. Spotify currently offers four different types of plans, which are Individual, Duo, Family and Students. The cheapest subscription is reserved for Students, who pay 5.99 euros per month. To qualify for this plan, remember that you must have a higher education accreditation. This is followed by the Individual plan, which costs 10.99 euros per month. This is followed by Duo, which is for two accounts and costs 14.99 euros and Family, which is the most expensive service at 17.99 euros per month.
All Spotify plans offer the same thing: ad-free, offline music and on-demand playback. The only differences between these plans are the number of users. The Duo plan allows you to use two accounts and the Family plan up to 6 accounts.
On the other hand, Tidal has two options to choose from for individual subscription, HiFi and HiFi Plus. Both give you access to a huge catalog of over 100 million songs, ad-free playback and Tidal Connect, among others. The only difference between the two is the audio quality. In HiFi you can listen to songs in 16 bits at 44.1 hHz, while in HiFi Plus you can go up to 24 bit and 192 kHz. The price variation between the two is considerable: HiFi costs 10.99 euros and HiFi Plus 19.99 euros per month.
Then, Tidal also offers the Family plan with which you can use 5 different accounts from 16.99 euros per month. And if you are a student, you will receive a 50% discount on HiFi or HiFi Plus subscriptions.
As you can see, both Spotify and Tidal are very similar in their options and prices. However, with Tidal you will enjoy a much higher audio quality than Spotify. In comparison, Tidal’s most basic plan allows us to listen to songs at 1,411 Kbps in FLAC while Spotify offers the maximum 320 Kbps in OGG.
Payment to artists
As we said before, Tidal was presented at the time as a platform that pays artists in a much fairer way. Spotify pays between 0.002 and 0.004 cents per playback and takes into account factors such as popularity and song length. Tidal on the other hand, pays 0.01 cents per listen, a much higher amount.
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