Is Tidal in trouble?

It usually comes from people who hate MQA and are fervently hoping it fails, so best to take with a suitable dose of salt!

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On the principle of deferred pain, just export a spreadsheet of all your Tidal albums on a regular basis, then if they do go away you can buy the albums then.

I have added 1,000 Tidal albums to my library in the last year. Overreacting would have cost me $20,000.

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Maybe they are doomed. I found an album thats not released until next month but can stream it on Tidal.

Maybe I take one of My Chill Pills and keep going

All reports seem to suggest they are broke but they keep going , I just signed up for Netflix too , a glutton for punishment

Mike

Any news on this? Seems like it has been close for years.

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Nothing as yet. They still have the better part of six months to go and my impression was they were very much at the start of the process when the announcement broke last December.

I opted for a different solution: I signed up for Apple Music to complement Roon.

When I add an album to Tidal, I add it to my Apple Music collection (and vice versa). So far, I have not had an issue with music on one but not on the other service.

I also went into iTunes and created a Smart Playlist to see my Apple Music downloaded albums. I can sort by add date, as I do on the Tidal app, and be sure I haven’t missed anything on either side.

Another $9.99/month, but this solved two problems for me:

  1. I use my iTunes library for Roon. But, remote listening is done with my iPhone X. I have a Sony PHA-3 at work and my car supports CarPlay, so my phone as a transport works well. Now, I have the same “library” at home and on the go.

I have to be careful that I don’t create custom iTunes playlists that include Apple Music, as these won’t work within Roon. I use Tidal and Apple Music to sample new music and if I really like something, I look for a permanent copy (i.e. buy from iTunes, a CD on Amazon, download from HD Tracks, et al.).

  1. I tried streaming Tidal to my phone (both at work and in the car) - sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. Even when the streaming was good, it doesn’t work with Siri, so selecting music while driving was a challenge.

I don’t need lossless or hi-res audio on the go; Apple Music + my library in iCloud is more bandwidth friendly. Many of my playlists are pre-downloaded on my 256GB phone, so this even works when flying or in rural areas w/o good inner-tubes.

I am still very interested in WAN access to Roon, on my iPhone and laptop, but it has to work well with CarPlay and Siri or it’s a non-starter for me. For now, I have a workable solution.

AURALiC is a very responsible company and if they are having problems it truly is a very bad sign for Tidal .

The only bias I’ve ever seen from them is a slight negative bias towards Apple .

Already done it !! Lol. I’m gonna spend a lot of money on used cd’s if Tidal goes out .

Last I heard June was the kickoff month .

I’ve never found voice control useful — can you give examples of what you tell Siri to do (I.e. do you play an album or an artist or ??)

I tell Siri to play an album I know is in my library and Siri decides to play something that isn’t even in the same genre. “Siri, play And then there were three by Genesis”. “Now playing, Jay Z”

Voice control for anything beyond a casual quickie is, in my humble opinion, worthless.

Agreed. Reliable, Star Trek style, 100% correct voice control needs reasoning, interpretative intelligence and that requires consciousness. Machines are NEVER going to have that.

I think Siri is a LONG way off the pace, but if you think it’s never going to happen, take 5 minutes to watch below and see what Google are doing with Assistant today.

I have used both Siri and Assistant day-to-day and Assistant is WAY ahead. Amazon Alexa is also far more powerful than Siri right now.

The release of The Carters on TIDAL only, with Beyoncé throwing shade on Spotify on said album, makes me think that the end is not that near.

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The labels want Tidal to survive even though they are late on payments

While I am driving, everything.

EDIT: to be clear, my answer was in the context of using CarPlay…while driving, not everywhere (like sitting at my desk).

I prefer the privacy aspects of Siri over anything Google does with Assistant. Same with Amazon. Yes, privacy is dead, I get that. I simply do not trust Google and never will trust them; Amazon, I recognize I’m screwed because they get most of my shopping now. I’m not ready to live a cash-only existence in exchange for the anonymity. Yet.

Voice control is nice for some situations, but I didn’t buy Roon and all the beautiful display and extra data at my fingertips to bother with voice control. It is really at the bottom of my list.

I have a HomePod now at home again - I returned the first one because I could never reliably get it to play what I asked for. But it’s good for the kids to use because they don’t all have phones and are patient enough not to start yelling at Siri and calling her unrepeatable names like their father has been known to do. Maybe.

It’s probably not a good sign when Siri says “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” Yeah. That actually happened.

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That or the fact that exclusivity lasted 2 days might mean it is.

Maybe Tidal was taking too long to pay them! :grinning: