I’m currently a subscriber to both Tidal and Quobuz. I carry these two subscriptions primarily based on the differing catalogs and choices available on the two services. However recently I’ve noticed less and less of a difference (@ least for my music tastes) in their catalog offerings. Meaning I can pretty much find what I’m looking for on either one these days. For simplicity sake and cost I’d like to reduce down to a single service. I’m a big user of playlists and have many sourced from my local library (originally built in iTunes) and ones which I’ve built in Tidal, quobuz and Roon.
Again for simplicity, cost, and mobility (access to them when away from home) i’d love to be able to consolidate to one service. Does anyone know if there is a reliable source of information regarding the catalogs of the various services? I recognize titles come and go on all services at any given time. I’m simply looking for an indicator of the overall catalog sizes and perhaps indicators of genre depth/focus etc… I enjoy the occasional classical but am by no means a classical aficionado. Same for jazz. I’m mostly a fan of music from the late 50’s thru to the late 70’s and between my local library and either of my subscriptions, have plenty to choose from. That’s why I think it maybe time to consolidate. I would like to find a trusted industry source regarding service catalogs. Does anyone have suggested pointers?
I was in a similar situation as you and your best bet is to use Spotify for the simple reason that it has the largest catalogue. I use soundiiz.com to sync my playlists but ultimately, all my playlists are “master” version in Spotify
It’s really hard to get reliable data on the total size of catalogs from Tidal/Qobuz and even if you could it probably wouldn’t provide good data for you to make a decision because what really matters is the size of catalog accessible to you in the region you are in and that is even harder to get any good data for. I would suggest the best data is your own analysis based on your playlists and coverage of your local albums in these services. But given that you can move playlists back and forth easily with Soundiz, you can easily turn off one or the other and change back, and you’re not seeing much difference between them, I’d just make a call and try the one you feel most comfortable with and see what happens. You can always switch back… I’m in kind of the same boat and will likely go the Qobuz route. I’ve been slowly switching any adds I’ve made to my library from Tidal to Qobuz and once I get to the end of this process I’m going to turn Tidal off and see what happens…
It works with myriad services, including Qobuz.
Does it convert, say, the non-hi-res Spotify track to a hi-res track in Qobuz or Tidal? That’d be a critical feature for me.
Craig… thanks for your thoughts. I didn’t even consider regional issues. As you mentioned and as I thought, it would probably be difficult to get an overall picture of the services catalogs. It makes sense as you suggest to just make a choice and see how it goes. Like yourself, I have been slowly leaning towards Quobuz and have been selecting my library additions accordingly. I’ve read up on Soundiiz and had planned at some point (when I consolidate services) to use it as a tool to centralize all my playlists. I’ve spent many many hours putting them together for events, family gatherings, parties, etc. and would like to have them all available outside of Roon for easy mobile access.
That’s great to hear, from one pedantic to another. I did understand it’s not the transfer of an actual file, should’ve been more clear. In any event, other tools I’ve used aren’t smart enough to seek out the link to hi-res files, so this is really encouraging.
Appreciate the help!
Since Soundiz is being discussed here along with Spotify, thought I’d remind those of you that use Shazam, that you can use Soundiz to sync Shazam’d tracks to Roon. You can do this by connecting to Shazam to Spotify so that Shazam’d tracks are synced to Spotify (this is an option in Shazam). Then if you subscribe to Soundiiz you can sync Spotify playlists to Qobuz and/or Tidal and these will automatically sync with Roon if you are a subscriber to one of them. Since you can subscribe to Spotify free and you get one playlist sync for free with Soundiiz, if you only use it for this purpose it’d be free. But if you want to sync more than one playlist or sync Shazam to to both Tidal and Qobuz you have to subscribe to Soundiiz premium.
One other question - is Soundiiz flexible enough to create a “best-in-class” playlist that, for example, takes a Spotify playlist and creates a playlist that pulls from two or more new services (again, to get the best file among competing services). I’d imagine that’s not possible, but just wondering.
Really, [moderated] businesses pay a lot of money for the free input from customers.
I’ve been playing around with Spotify interface just to see how it compares to roon as far as the interface. I’m already a lifetime roon member but having access to a much deeper library would be a big draw. Figure once hifi service comes out, try it out for a month before make a decision.
The pluses:
You can control from iPhone and iPad from the Lock Screen.
Don’t have to relaunch app each time and wait for it to restart.
App open instantly
You can search for label, genre, and range of years combined on whole library. Exp: label:manifesto genre:punk year:1980-1987. Exactly what I thought Focus would allow in 1.8 but doesn’t work on the streaming service as a whole
Huge library
Excellent radio feature
Great discovery
Great playlists
Cons:
Not sure if can bring in local library?
Not sure if will offer above cd quality
Currently no live lyrics in US but is in limited testing
No mention of price or family plan
No mention of what countries are actually getting it
Doesn’t include star ratings or album reviews
Wow, thank you. This works so well. I’m pumped about moving Playlist from spotify over to Tidal and accessing them via roon
That’s what i do because Spotify has the best playlists of any of the music services. It’s not close either.
It must be me being just an old fart but I have never yet even “got” this whole playlists thing?
Am I the only person who just saves and listens to whole albums?
Of which for my preferred genre Qobuz has more than enough selections to satisfy me over my remaining lifetime.
I agree. I don’t even bother with Tidal Playlist. Spotifys Playlist in a blowout win.
For me, the ability to filter out explicit content is critical, as I have young kids.
No you’re not alone. It’s like Payola for the 21st century. Give me an album anytime rather than a mix tape.
So I listen to Albums when I’m listening by myself 90% of my time. The other 10 is when I workout. I need playlists for that extra motivation.
I use Playlists for everything else. When I’m with my wife and kids, it’s Playlist. Party or back ground, Playlists again.
And Spotify does this better than anyone. In my opinion.
I sort of get that reasoning for playlists but I fortunately do not have that situation or needs.
But I think I now understand where you are coming from.
However also being a lazy a$$ old fart I cannot be bothered to put together any playlists and the few I have tried from providers did not hold my attention for very long with too much material of no interest to me so it was skip,skip,skip etc.
About as close to a playlist as I will get is to select my favorite tracks and hit shuffle, done!
I’m definitely an album sort of a person. I do my “serious” listening in the at night on headphones and I definitely enjoy the whole album experience.
Having said this I often finish the evening off with Roon Radio or a shuffle through my library. Not playlists as such, but a sort of playlist-type thing.
I’m right there with you, I love listening to whole albums. I see an album as a piece of art, it can take you on a journey.
But I do like using the radio feature when I have company over and we are playing games or what not, it’s just easier that way.