Tidal, the music streaming brainchild of Jay-Z, is still pushing forward in their quest to attract more users. With new apps and a new offer aimed surely at students, the company are firing on all cylinders to try and usurp the current king, Spotify.
Is anybody using Tidal? Will anybody ever use Tidal? Jay-Z’s streaming music service has got the backing of huge artists such as Rihanna, Madonna, Beyonce, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris and even Taylor Swift, yet it continues to struggle in the market.
Today, they launched a belated assault on the home computer market by releasing dedicated desktop versions for Mac and PC. The mobile and web versions are also getting an update, with more personalisation options and improved search results.
Tidal has also partnered with Ticketmaster and will integrate the service within the application, offering users the ability to view concert info and purchase tickets. This puts them once again in direct competition with Spotify who have a similar deal with SongKick.
Perhaps the most attractive deal is the student discount, which is taking the fight straight to their primary demographic. “In the coming weeks”, students will be able to get 50% off of a Tidal subscription by registering with a valid .edu email address. This works for both packages, meaning you can now join Tidal for only £4.99 a month if you takes the standard non-lossless service.
For those unaware, Tidal is a music streaming service which prides itself on high-fidelity sound quality. Using uncompressed, lossless music codecs, it achieves the same experience you would get from listening to the same track at home on a CD. This quality boost puts it ahead of the current competition such as Spotify and Deezer, who only stream at 320kbps.
The problem is that most people are conditioned to the MP3 generation and really don’t care about the difference. Unless you’re a music connoiseur or somebody who uses £1000 amplifiers, you likely won’t hear the difference. Then there’s the issue that most portable devices don’t really have the audio processing abilities that are required to get the most from an uncompressed track.
Possibly Tidal’s biggest undoing however, is price. It’s premium tier costs twice as much as Spotify at £19.99 per month and is the only way to get the lossless sound quality option. The standard plan is even more confusing, offering the same features as Spotify for £9.99 per month. Bear in mind that Spotify is free for this service.