Hello, everybody, I’ve been thinking to move on from my Spotify subscription to move to Tidal or Deezer. I want to try out HIFI audio, but still get a good and stable experience. Are there any suggestions for which one I should pick? Could you also tell about your experience with those apps, or are there any other you would recommend more?
I use Tidal HiFi and it’s great, you need compatible headphones to really benefit from the sound quality though.
I am really loving the sound quality on deezer, switched to it a couple months ago after my YouTube music family plan price jumped 50%. I put up with YTM’s awful quality for the (old) price and other perks (YT) for years but no longer. Haven’t tried tidal.
I moved to Deezer from You Tube Music a couple of years ago. I was on YTM for about six months after Google shut down Google Play Music (which was awesome). You Tube Music was a steaming turd, flakiest app I have ever used.
Deezer has been fantastic. Android app very rarely gives me any issues, and has probably the most extensive catalogue of any streaming service I have ever used (although it is a bit disorganised and shambolic at times), The Premium subscription is reasonably priced, especially if I use the yearly sub rather than the monthly one, and sound quality is great (although I only use HQ audio, not Hifi). I believe they pay artists more than most others
Other big upside is that there is NO limit to how many tracks you can download into a device if you are a Premium user! I have half a terabyte of country music in my phone. The only limitation is how much storage your device has. You can only download playlists / music into a maximum of three devices, I only have my phone and a waterproof media player so not an issue for me
Only downsides are the somewhat disorganised catalogue I mentioned - some artists have more than one artist profile with different albums scattered across them, and when two different artists share the same name they often get mushed together into the one profile. Discographies tend to be a bit random in the way they are organised. But careful use of the search function will find almost anything and everything.
Reorganising/ rearranging large playlists on the web client/ browser can get a bit flaky, with a really big playlist I find its sometimes easier to just rebuild it from scratch rather than move large blocks of tracks around
The MP3 upload tool is pretty clunky and has no folder feature, and a limit of only 2000 tracks upload. But because they have such an extensive catalog you shouldnt need it much
The downloaded music section in the app has no folders either which would be nice but isnt a deal breaker. Only other issue I have is that the Play button for playlists on the Android app defaults to shuffle mode which is a flaw shared with Spotify, and there is no way to disable shuffle even for Premium users. This is the ONLY thing YouTube Music gets right
I havent used Tidal but I have heard their catalogue is much more limited and what little exploration I did bore that out
Ironically my fav lossless streaming service on Android is Apple Music. Amazon Music HD is also pretty good.
Not a fan of Tidal’s UI and recommendations, and I hate that I can’t see album covers when scrolling through a playlist. Haven’t tried Deezer cause Canada
If you use AndroidAuto and want to be able to like/dislike songs, or add a song to your library, you’ll be disappointed with Tidal. I just tried them again recently to see if I could move away from Spotify, and they STILL don’t offer these abilities after all these years. For me, that’s a deal breaker.
(These features, along with being able to reliably cast to a home stereo receiver, are usually what kills a music streaming service for me, on Android. Seems like most of these music streaming companies just don’t care to add these features to their apps).
