By Becky Roberts
published
It’s cheaper, for one
You may have to give up your family home’s wall-hogging TV and your mum’s famous mac and cheese when you go back to school, but if there’s one thing you’ll be sure to take with you, it’s access to all the world’s music at your fingertips. Indeed, music streaming services more or less make our phones and laptops unlimited jukeboxes for a mere tenner a month or – good news, students – almost half that price if you are over 16 years old and go to college or university.
Now, Spotify’s student plan is famously good value and likely has more excellently soundtracked house parties around the world to answer for than it does songs in its all-encompassing catalogue. But rival service Tidal, which Jay-Z kickstarted nearly ten years ago, is vying for students’ monthly subscriptions and actually has a cracking case for doing so for three reasons:
1. Tidal sounds way better
Tidal’s sound quality is in the same ballpark as that of Apple Music and Amazon Music, whereas Spotify offers much lower quality than its closest competitors. In a nutshell, Tidal offers CD-quality and hi-res streams with bitrates maxing out at 24-bit/192kHz, or a data rate of 9216kbps. In comparison, Spotify’s data rate maxes out at around 320kbps. (A higher-quality Spotify HiFi tier has been promised but is yet to materialise.) You can read all about high-resolution audio if you’re interested in what all these bitrates mean, but essentially the gap between the two figures gives you the gist of it: Tidal’s streams can carry and communicate much more data (details) in a song and therefore offer much more insight into it.
You probably won’t hear these differences through a pair of cheap wireless earbuds, as they won’t likely be revealing enough to expose those differences – in which case, this argument for higher sound quality is moot. But if you listen to music through more advanced audio devices – premium wireless headphones, wired headphones or an audio system, say – you’ll have the opportunity to hear and benefit from the superior quality of Tidal streams.
2. Tidal has Dolby Atmos spatial audio songs
You’ve probably heard of ‘Dolby Atmos’ or ‘spatial audio’ or both, whether that’s in the cinema, Netflix catalogue or Apple’s extensive marketing. These similar technologies aim to deliver more immersive and enveloping 3D sound than what stereo and traditional surround audio do. In music terms, that translates to mixes (or remixes) that sound very open, spacious and often experimentally fun. It’s 'cinema for the ears', so to speak, and the metaphorical Marmite of this generation’s music technology. Still, if such mixes are for you, or you simply want to try out this buzzy format, Tidal is your service of the two. Its library boasts thousands of Dolby Atmos tracks, new songs and old, whereas Spotify has none.
3. Tidal is marginally cheaper
Both Spotify and Tidal offer discounted student subscriptions, with sign-ups commencing with a 30-day free trial (i.e. one month free).
The monthly fee after that initial free period is $5.49 / £5.49 / AU$6.49 for Tidal, with Spotify costing an additional 50p / 50c per month. OK so it’s not a huge difference – the price of a couple of pints over the course of the year? – but, as I’m sure is reminiscent of your parents’ back-to-school lecture, every penny (/cent) counts.
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- Subscribe to Spotify Premium for students
- Subscribe to Tidal for students
So what would you be missing out on?
Tidal has a lot going for it, then – much better sound, spatial audio and the most competitive student price out there. But Spotify replies with a few advantages of its own that you should feel comfortable missing out on before making Tidal your next jukebox.
The first is Spotify’s library of podcasts and audiobooks – something Tidal doesn’t have. Then you have slightly superior music discovery when it comes to the number of algorithmic playlists available to you, although Tidal is very much riding this algorithm wave and also serves up personalised playlists like ‘My Daily Discovery’, ‘Custom Mixes’ and artist radios based on your listening habits. The last one is Spotify Wrapped, which has become a bit of a pop culture moment every December and admittedly causes a flash of FOMO every year for us Tidal subscribers.
MORE:
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Becky Roberts
Becky is the managing editor of What Hi-Fi? and, since her recent move to Melbourne, also the editor of Australian Hi-Fi magazine. During her 10+ years in the hi-fi industry, she has reviewed all manner of audio gear, from budget amplifiers to high-end speakers, and particularly specialises in headphones and head-fi devices. In her spare time, Becky can often be found running, watching Liverpool FC and horror movies, and hunting for gluten-free cake.
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