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2015 was definitely the year of a higher awareness of quality streaming services. With the rise of Apple music, a lot more customers around the globe woke up to the benefits of millions of tracks available on the fly with no extra cost on top of a usual £10 per month.
In the last year "Hi-Res Audio" has been a buzz word for many audiophiles looking for the most sublime listening experience. Hi-Res Audio allows customers to listen to the tracks they want, at the best possible quality, leading this new trend, is Tidal HiFi.
TIDAL is relatively new to the world of streaming audio, following such services as Spotify, Google music and Qobuz, they had big footsteps to follow and have grown to become the leader in lossless audio streaming due to many positive policies towards both consumers and artists...
A group of 16 artists spanning multiple generations (Madonna, Calvin Harris, Beyonce, Rihanna etc) actually own Tidal, with Jay-Z being a major player in its rise after his purchase of parent company Aspiro.
No other streaming service pays higher royalties to the artists themselves, in fact it is "rumoured" that artists get 3x as much royalties from Tidal than Spotify.
Customers get early access to tickets, albums, and tour info through the apps social pages connected to artist profiles.
The app itself
Having installed the Tidal app you are required to create a membership (even if you are not ready yet to commit to subscribing you can still browse the vast catalogue) and then you are launched into the main page.
From there you can see the latest music videos, latest albums, presale ticket exclusives or just search as you wish for desired songs. You can also hit the menu button at top left for more featured pages and options..
What's new is exactly that, new material added to the catalogue,
TIDAL Rising is recommended artists from around the world which the app considers to be like your taste.
TIDAL Discovery is a promotion of some of the best unsigned artists from around the globe, giving them a little royalty and exposure into a vast saturated market.
Options and settings..
The app allows you choose exactly how you want YOUR music delivered. Different qualities are available for WiFi, mobile data and download, if in a poor connection, you can also set for streaming optimisation to balance you bandwidth. You can also set your download location for offline play, word of warning though, the HIFI quality songs are very large and will quickly burn through a data allowance....as well as smaller storage spaces..
The Quality..
This is what it comes down to.. How you actually hear your music. I am being honest when I say I was actually very impressed with the music quality outputted to me headphones, while it is not the full Hi-Res quality of 24bit 192kHz it is the true CD equivalent of 16bit 44.1kHz (that being 99% of what we can hear anyway..) luckily for me the Xperia Z5 will fill In any blanks and make it just that little punchier anyway (tbh, I noticed no difference) the sound was definitely more immersive than mp3 or the like of compressed audio, and every tone of voice and hit of a cymbal was much more richer than compressed audio you find on streaming services such as Apple music. It comes at a cost higher than most streaming sites and apps, at 19.99 a month for the HIFI package it's down to the user if they feel they want that little bit extra for the jump in price, for me it really is a fantastic experience and worth the months free trial just to decide for yourself. But for those that like the catalogue and layout, you can downgrade to a premium account for 9.99 a month with the same catalogue at 320kbps AAC quality, which to be honest is perfectly comparable to any other service.
Layout
The layout is very simple and skins itself on tones used in the album art for the track you are currently listening to, the only thing apart from the pause, forward and backward buttons is a little icon letting you know if you are in hifi mode or not, and the top menu, allowing you to add the track to playlists, share with Facebook or make available for offline play, very simple, very nice. It also has lock screen controls on Android allowing quick access to controls, without unlocking your handset.
My thoughts
With my storage getting eaten up by 4k videos, I've been getting nervous when I want to add a new album to my device, at 1GB+ per Hi-Res album, storage is becoming valuable real estate even with large capacity cards. With Tidal I now have the freedom to take high quality music with me, without the need to worry about moving or deleting files just to fit a new album in, with exceptional quality and packages for most budgets, TIDAL will no doubt continue to dominate the new emerging market for high fidelity music on the go.
TIDAL is available in the Google play store now.
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Tidals official stance is actually FOUR times the Spotify fee for Hi-Res streams, and as near as 2x for standard I believe, I played it safe and quoted 3x just to be fair.
