Trying Tidal: The Good, Bad, and Everything Else

Why did I try Tidal?

I have been having numerous issues with Spotify for the last 6 months. The top issues are:

The queue will randomly move itself back an hour’s worth of songs. NOT to where the queue was an hour ago, to clarify. Uniquely annoying.
Battery usage seems to get worse and worse… I’ll listen to two hours of music and my phone will lose 20% battery.
Clicking a link when someone shares a song with me will immediately play that song and clear my queue.

I’ve tried to be patient, but these issues have caused mounting anger and disappointment with Spotify, so I want a change.

Looking for alternatives

There are lots of available options, way more than just Tidal. How’d I land there?

I ruled out Amazon Music almost immediately, as it’s Amazon… Enough said.

Apple Music is great if you are deep in the Apple ecosystem. I on the other hand only have an iPad, and it’s only used for taking notes. Trying to use Apple Music on anything not-Apple reduces you to low-quality files and an overall lackluster experience.
Additionally, they have no support for anything like Spotify Connect, so I can’t stream to smart devices in my house (unless they have AirPlay, which I do not have).

YouTube Music is another alternative, and one I heavily considered. The unique upside of being able to play anything on YouTube and add it to playlists as if it was music is something that no other mainstream music streaming platform can touch.

In the past, I’ve heard good things about Tidal, especially regarding the quality of the music, and how they support artists. Tidal has one of the highest payouts of all streaming platforms, and I want to support the artists I listen to so much.
I decided to try Tidal due to a mix of the personal testimonies, and the fact that I do have some issues with YouTube (notably not with YT Music, mainly the Shorts platform).

Trying out Tidal

Opening the app, I was immediately impressed. The 30-day free trial makes it very easy to start the platform and see if you like it, which I strongly appreciate.
The flow to start using the app is awesome - selecting artists you like, and then getting more recommended to you for every artist you click? Amazing idea, and they execute it perfectly. I think I spent 30 minutes selecting artists. The artist selection was extremely thorough, bringing up a variety of genres, especially niche ones.
With all of these artists I was selecting, I was expecting a lot of uniquely generated playlists and other content, just for me, and I was really excited for what I was about to see.

And then I finished setup. There is one playlist pregenerated, your “welcome playlist”. This playlist was generated from the artists you selected, and is decently long. It seemed to bias the first few(twenty-ish) artists I selected, and didn’t include the rest at all.
Needless to say, I am highly disappointed.

I searched for more generated content — maybe they only add the one mix to your account to not overload you?
There are other generated playlists, but none are unique to you, which is something I had been led to expect. This left me with a bad impression right off the bat, but I listened to the welcome mix to try and change my mind.

And hey, Tidal does sound good. I have a pair of Klipsch R-51PM bookshelf speakers, and playing straight from the app via 3.5mm sounds beautiful with FLAC. However for Bluetooth, since these speakers don’t support any advanced codecs such as AptX, sounds about equivalent to Spotify. (Klipsch, if you read this, please add advanced audio codecs to future powered speakers!)

No issues with Tidal on my commute to work - it interfaces just fine with Android Auto, and it was a seamless switch. Points for Tidal!

The workday

I’d been listening to music for an hour or so at work when I found my first big flaw. If I add a song to queue manually, and don’t add it to a playlist right then and there, the song completely disappears. This is really confusing because there is a “previously listened” section, it just only works for songs in the playlist. Yeah. Huge oversight on their part.

Being the smart person I am, I thought to remedy this (to an extent) via a platform that tracks listens— enter Last.fm. Turns out, you can’t just “Connect Tidal” like you can with Spotify… another huge minus. I had to download the Last.fm app and give it permission to read my notifications… They promise that the data won’t be sent off-device, and that they only read music notifications that you select, and I do generally trust Last.fm, so it’s mostly fine, but it still sucks that it’s not as convenient as Spotify.
Minus points for Tidal.

With the ability to see recently listened to songs back, I can now add songs to my playlists as needed. Yay! Trying to interact with the app, I start noticing weird problems in the UI. There is a lack of swipe gestures, forcing me to have to reach quite far and press specific buttons. In 2025, this feels unpolished, especially coming from Spotify, where I can go back and forth with swipes, and manage my queue with swipes as well.

Getting home, Tidal Connect worked seamlessly with my Sonos speaker, and I listened to some music there. I didn’t notice a sound quality difference between Spotify and Tidal on this speaker, but this Sonos speaker generally never sounds amazing, so not bad.

The desktop app

I hopped on my computer and downloaded Tidal to listen while I did some work… and the Desktop app sucks. The website made it really hard to download Tidal — I had to go to a search engine to find the downloader, since the main Tidal site seems to only be a player. There was no link, no “Download App” button, it was a really confusing experience.

Once installed, I immediately notice that it is very clearly the web app — I got a popup asking if I wanted to opt-in to cookies. On a desktop app. Yep. And the unpolished nature only continues from there.
Logging in drops a little pop-up page, instead of being a login in the same window, or redirecting me to the browser.
You have to move through multiple UI menus to see the lyrics, suggested tracks, etc. yet the queue is available in two separate UIs, with three buttons that open the queue? Yikes.

Overall, unpolished and janky experience, but at least it sounds good? I could clearly tell, through a variety of genres, which was Tidal and which was Spotify, and Tidal sounded clearer every time.

My Thoughts

I want to love Tidal, I really do. It sounds good, it has the features on paper that I really want to go for, and a more competitive price than Spotify.
Fun fact: while researching platforms, I noticed Spotify is the most expensive platform out there, yet they pay out the least.

However, at every turn, I have a problem with Tidal’s UI. It makes it jarring to enjoy the music I want to listen to, the music that their platform presents in lossless quality. As someone who listens to upwards of 10 hours of music a day, I interact a lot with my music app, and having terrible UX makes for a terrible listening experience.

I think it helps to make a pros/cons list, so let’s see here…

Pros

More competitive price than Spotify
Higher quality sound
Pays artists more
Seems less concerned with advertising to you in-platform (no merch, tours, “try out audiobooks!”, etc.)
Amazing song recommendation algorithm
Along with song recommendations, artist discovery is amazing.
I found more artists in one day with Tidal than I do in an entire month with Spotify. Might just be beginner’s luck, but I liked it. A lot.
UI is focused on the music, with no distractions or clutter (no full-screen artist videos, pop-up “Check out this song!”, etc.)
Sharing songs with Tidal is platform-agnostic
If you’re signed in to Tidal, the song will open in the app, but otherwise it gives you a site with links to pick your streaming service from
It has support for Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music (some people get DEEZER, but not everyone)
Has a nearly 1-to-1 replacement for Spotify Connect
Seriously, the artist and song discovery. Their “similar songs” button is amazing. 10/10.

Cons

No social features (Jams, Blends, “see what your friends are listening to”)
Lack of uniquely curated playlists
No Last.fm connecting, manual scrobble only
No universal “recently played”, and the previously played song queue is bad
No swipe gestures (EDIT: I found one swipe gesture in the entire app)
Artist Radio plays very little of the artist… in an hour of listening, I got 2 songs from the artist.
Desktop app is just a packaged web app, and feels janky
- God the desktop app sucks. I hate using it.
Playlists cannot have a custom order, only alphabetical, creation order, and last updated order.

TL;DR and Conclusion

Despite me trying my best to switch to Tidal, I only lasted about 36 hours on the platform before the UX pissed me off too far.
I’m back to using Spotify, and the queue bug and battery life issues seem a lot more minor to me now. I will be back to check Tidal out in a few years, though. The platform has potential, their UI is clean, it just needs work to feel more usable.

Tidal, if you’re reading this, please reach out! I would love to help you make the best platform possible, I really want to love your product.

Maybe I’ll try another platform next… YouTube Music?