Tidal or Qobuz

Audio Gear Talk Music Services
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At this moment we (girlfriend and me) are using Spotify. But I’m not so happy anymore considering what I get for that price and since my usage of Spotify dropped with more than ten times since I’m using Roon (who had thought that their wrapped would be so handy)

I’m considering Tidal or Qobuz now. For the quality and the integration with Roon. Pricewise it’s not that big of a deal.

But I don’t really get the difference. Don’t they just both do the same? I listen to all kinds of music but most of all it’s to discover “new” things. New is relative because my music to discover hangs in the 60’s to 00’s. And if I found something I like I go looking for the album to add it physically to my collection.

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Qobuz have a download store. So if you decide to buy something after you’ve auditioned that makes it a little easier.

If you buy regularly -there is a subscription level that gives you a discount on high res purchases.

How good the coverage is depends a bit on your musical tastes - for me I didn’t see much difference.

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I found Tidal to have more music available to my taste. Though I have both, I find myself always choosing Tidal.

See if you can get a trial and try them both? If you got a family, see if anyone else would like to try it and do a family share to keep costs down?

Enjoy!

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I use streaming solely for music discovery. At first only TIDAL was available on Roon, so I used that pretty much from the outset.

Then I used Qobuz for two years or so before switching to TIDAL a few months ago. I intend to switch back to Qobuz.

Qobuz, until recently, was significantly cheaper than TIDAL. Now an annual Qobuz subscription works out about the same as monthly TIDAL.

Qobuz gives marginally more to the artist, although I purchase what I like. The store is okay, but I find that I can usually source from Bandcamp or elsewhere for the same – I don’t care for hi-res, only good production, and great music. For me, a Sublime subscription is just about worthwhile, but I won’t renew that as I prefer a physical CD.

The TIDAL app is more mature than Qobuz, but I rarely use either, so not an issue.

Recently, I’ve found some TIDAL releases disappointing and often have to seek out an alternative version. I never had this experience with Qobuz. That’s why I’m ditching TIDAL.

Catalogue-wize, they are pretty much the same for my tastes.

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