Listening Experience - Spotify Premium vs Free. Both the accounts – Spotify Free and Premium, let you simply listen to the Spotify music tracks on your Xbox, Apple or Android smartphone, Windows computer or Mac, PS3, PS4, paired devices or smart TVs. However, there are certain variances in the listening experience. Spotify (free version) vs Spotify Premium: What more do you get with the premium version. Audio quality: Spotify Premium offer music at a bit rate of 320 kbps, while the free version of the platform offers songs at 96 kbps on mobile devices and 160 kbps on desktops. Ads: Spotify (free version) will display ads after every four or five songs a.
If you’re looking to get into music streaming, there are several ways you can go, but picking the right service depends heavily on what you want out of it. No two platforms are as different as Spotify and Tidal; where Spotify prioritizes social features and personalized algorithms, Tidal prioritizes sound quality and puts artists first.
Editor’s note: This Tidal vs Spotify article was updated on October 22, 2020, to improve alt text.
Tidal vs Spotify: Music discovery
Spotify and Tidal both have clean, dark-themed user interfaces.
Both Tidal and Spotify offer various music discovery features and enable browsing by genre, mood, activity and more. Additionally, whether you’re on Tidal or Spotify, you have access to a radio feature that makes it easy to discover music similar to what you’re already listening to. Both streaming services use algorithms to learn your music tastes and recommend songs, but the ways in which they do so differ.
Tidal creates up to eight playlists that focus on eight different genres that you listen to a lot and have saved to “My Collection,” called “My Mix”. If you only listen to three genres regularly, however, it only gives you three playlists. These update gradually, rather than on a weekly schedule like Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. And, if you like the “My Mix” you’re listening to today, you can save it as a separate playlist that isn’t lost forever when the mix updates.
Spotify and Tidal share similar music discovery features, but Spotify takes it a step further with expansive playlist options that may be filtered by mood, genre, activity, and more.
Spotify’s algorithms create not only the “Discover Weekly” playlist, but a weekly “Release Radar” playlist, up to six “Daily Mix” playlists, and, every so often: special static playlists such as “Your Time Capsule.” The “Discover Weekly” feature collects data about your listening habits, and recommends songs from artists and genres that you like. “Release Radar” is a one-stop shop for newly released music from all the artists you follow on Spotify. “Daily Mix” playlists combine music you’ve been listening to a lot recently and similar songs, and is essentially the same feature as Tidal’s My Mix. Algorithmically designed static playlists are Spotify exclusives released every so often and not on a particular schedule. For example, “Your Time Capsule” was a playlist released for Spotify users in 2017, and it used recent listening data to create a playlist of music users would likely have listened to as a teenager.
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Spotify has a “Charts” tab, which organizes the top songs all over the world by which country they came from. These playlists tell you if the song is new, on the uptrend, or on the downtrend. Tidal also has charts playlists, but there are fewer of them. On the other hand, Tidal has “Tidal Rising” where you can discover artists rising in popularity who Tidal’s curators have selected to feature based on the potential they see in them. Tidal Rising is a great way to discover new artists that are just starting to make their mark in the music industry.
Spotify has pretty much everything Tidal has and more when it comes to music discovery. In addition to algorithm playlists, both Spotify and Tidal have a smorgasbord of editorial playlists that are frequently updated. However, Spotify simply has more playlists for every genre, mood, and activity so there are more options to choose from, and many of these playlists serve a similar function to Tidal Rising by creating exposure for less popular artists.
Winner: SpotifyTidal vs Spotify: Content
Spotify and Tidal both have clean, dark-themed user interfaces.
Both services offer music, that’s a given, but let’s see where Tidal and Spotify’s content offerings diverge.
Tidal has a larger music catalog, but Spotify’s is more niche
Tidal offers over 60 million tracks whereas Spotify has about 50 million; clearly both have a considerable amount of music. Some artists opt to release exclusive music only to Tidal, sometimes for months, before it is released to the rest of the world. On the other hand, some lesser-known indie music that can be found on Spotify may not be found on Tidal.
Spotify accepts music submissions from anyone, whether it is submitted through a third party distributor such as CDBaby or submitted directly to Spotify. For an indie artist to submit to Tidal, however, they have to submit it through a select few music distributors. If you typically only listen to relatively popular artists, this shouldn’t count against Tidal, but if you’re a fan of true bedroom pop, you may want to go with Spotify.
Podcast fans can get their fix with Spotify, but Tidal has videos
Spotify hosts a large selection of podcasts for all your educational and entertainment needs.
Tidal is focused on musical artists, and so it doesn’t offer many podcasts. With Spotify, you have access to a wide library of podcasts, and a few podcast-specific playback features such as a sleep timer and speed adjuster. However, Spotify doesn’t offer as many podcast-specific features as some of the best podcast apps out there.
Tidal offers over 250,000 videos, many of which are exclusive to Tidal users and which include music videos, filmed live performances, and movies and documentaries about music. Spotify doesn’t have videos, but some songs have short GIFs that display on the player screen during the song.
Tidal has a ton of exclusive artist content
Tidal is a streaming service for the artists. Not only does it pay its artists more per stream than Spotify, they also have in-depth credit pages which outline who contributed to the music and how. Slideshow apps compatible with spotify.
Tidal also offers its members exclusive artist content. Tidal X is a program for Tidal users that includes exclusive access to live shows, meet and greets, livestreams, concert tickets, and more. Examples of Tidal X events were Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 and Season 4 fashion shows where over 500 Tidal members were allowed to attend and the events were live streamed for all other Tidal members around the world.
Tidal Rising is a program in which Tidal’s curators select artists rising in popularity who they feel have potential and offer them free support. Artists get professionally photographed, get their music placed on the front page of Tidal, are offered Tour Support, and more. Not only does this feature support musicians in a direct and tangible way, but it’s also a great way for Tidal users to discover new artists that are just starting to make their mark in the music industry.
Spotify has a few similar features such as artist playlists which an artist can make and then add to their profile’s home page, and the Concerts tab which lists the artist’s upcoming shows in your city. Additionally, artists can record exclusive Spotify Singles in Spotify’s studios.
Winner: DrawTidal vs Spotify: Streaming quality
If you’re looking for HiFi audio, Tidal is your friend. The Tidal HiFi membership offers four settings for streaming quality: Normal, High, HiFi, and Master Quality Authenticated (MQA). The Normal setting is designed to limit the amount of Internet data being used because streaming high quality files takes up a lot of data. Some users choose only to use the HiFi and MQA settings while hooked up to Wi-Fi. The High setting tops out at 320kbps and uses AAC files. The HiFi setting offers CD-quality lossless FLAC files, meaning they are 44.1kHz/16bit. Master quality audio files are 96kHz/24bit FLAC or WAV files. If a song is labeled as MQA on Tidal, it means that the artist authenticated it themselves, but not all songs are available in this high quality format. Additionally, in order to benefit from HiFi or MQA audio, you need to have good studio headphones.
Spotify also offers different audio quality settings, but the maximum streaming quality is 320kbps over AAC files, which is the same as Tidal’s High setting.
Winner: TidalTidal vs Spotify: Pricing
Tidal is more expensive than Spotify but has higher quality audio.
Tidal offers two tiers for subscriptions. The cheaper of the two is Tidal Premium, which offers maximum 320kbps audio quality via AAC, a lossy file format. With Tidal Premium, you can access exclusive music, videos, events and editorial playlists. The more expensive Tidal subscription is Tidal HiFi, which is the subscription this article of Tidal vs Spotify focuses on. Tidal HiFi offers lossless, high bitrate audio files, Sony 360 Reality Audio, and Dolby Atmos Music in addition to everything Tidal Premium offers. Both Premium and HiFi offer family subscriptions which allow up to six accounts. A 30-day free trial is available for both Tidal Premium and Tidal HiFi. Tidal also has a free plan called Tidal Access but you can only access its live video channels and a few selected radios.
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Overall, Spotify’s pricing is cheaper, and there is a free version—something Tidal lacks. Spotify also has a 30-day free trial for Spotify Premium. If you want high bitrate lossless audio but don’t want to pay so much for Tidal, try Amazon Music HD.
Winner: SpotifyTidal vs Spotify: Social features
The Friend Activity section on the right updates as your friends change the song they’re listening to.
If you want the ability to view your friends’ listening activity or playlists, Spotify is the way to go. Spotify has a Friend Activity section which displays the songs your friends are actively listening to along with the album or playlist they are listening from. Unfortunately, this section is only available on the desktop app for Spotify, not the mobile app. You can follow friends by searching their username or by linking your Spotify account with Facebook. However, if you don’t want people to be able to view your Spotify activity, you can always disable the feature that publishes your activity. You have the ability to save your friends’ playlists to your library and create collaborative playlists where multiple friends can add and remove songs. Spotify also has partnerships with Instagram and Tinder, so it’s easy to share your music tastes with people on these apps as well.
As for Tidal, the only semi-social feature is that you can share a song from the Tidal app to your social media profiles, which is also a feature in Spotify.
Winner: SpotifyTidal vs Spotify: Extra featuresSpotify Free Vs. PremiumSpotify Wrapped shows your end-of-year statistics
In December of every year Spotify releases Spotify Wrapped which is an animation of infographics outlining your listening statistics from the year. These stats include things like how many total minutes you spent listening to music, which artist you listened to most, and which countries your favorite artists are from. Once you’ve viewed your statistics, you can share a card with your top songs and artists to your Instagram Stories to prove to everyone that you have superior music taste.
Spotify allows you to play local files
If you still have MP3 files saved to your computer from the old days and want to be able to listen to them in the same media player as your streamed music, you should get Spotify. Tidal doesn’t allow any local file playback, which is a shame for listeners with vast libraries from the CD-ripping days.
On both Tidal and Spotify, you can download files for offline listening. Keep in mind that if you download a lossless FLAC file on Tidal, it’s probably going to take up a lot of storage space on your device.
Tidal and Spotify have easy car integration
Both Tidal and Spotify are compatible with Apple Carplay and Android Auto so long as your car has that functionality. These enable easier navigation of your music while in the car, but you shouldn’t use them while actively driving. Additionally, Spotify can be integrated with Google Maps and Waze, and Tidal can be integrated with Waze for local control of your music from within the navigation app.
Winner: Spotify
I’m not going to crown an overall winner here because you may like Tidal or Spotify for reasons very particular to your preferences. The key differences between Tidal vs Spotify are these: Tidal is all about the artist-listener relationship whereas Spotify focuses on the listener as an individual who wants to discover new music and share it with their friends. Additionally, Tidal offers high-fidelity audio whereas Spotify does not, but Tidal HiFi is more expensive than Spotify Premium. All in all, both streaming services are popular for good reason, but you’ll have to decide which is the one for you.
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The Android world is brimming with music streaming services. While a handful of them provides free music, a few others have paid plans and the rest have a combination of paid+free services. So it’s a tad difficult to choose the right music service which will suit both the ears and the pocket.
Google Play Music (formerly known as Google Play Music All Access) and Spotify Music are among the top contenders for the best Android music app, so it seems only fair that we pit both the apps against each other and see which app's subscription service is worth the penny.
Also See: How to Set Up Your Apple Music Profile and Share Playlists in iOS 11
Audio Quality
Both, Spotify and Google Play Music boasts of libraries having songs over 30 million. To be more precise, Google Play Music has 35 million songs while Spotify has just over 30 million songs.
That’s pretty huge, so it’s a tad tough or rather infeasible to find the difference in the quality of each song. However, if we talk numbers, both Spotify and Google Music stream at maximum 320 kb/s.
If we talk numbers, both the music apps stream at maximum 320 kb/s.
But when it comes to the data usage — both over Wi-Fi and Cellular network — Google Music has few more options. For instance, it lets you choose your streaming quality over Wi-Fi and Mobile network — Low, Normal, High or Always High. These music streaming qualities are also available in the free version.
If we compare the same in Spotify, it does have a toggle for cellular data. But when it comes to choosing the quality over both the networks, unfortunately, that is missing.
Though, it offers four different audio qualities — Automatic, Normal, High, Extreme high — the extreme quality is locked away for premium users.
In a nutshell, you get all the sound quality features for free in Google Play Music, however, in Spotify, you’ll have to upgrade to the premium version (for the extreme high-quality songs).
That said, human ears can’t exactly detect the difference between the high and extreme high, so unless you’re one who can, both the players seem to be at par with each other.
See More: Exploring Google Music, the Amazing Cloud-based Music Player
Interface
On the very first glance, Google Play Music is bright and flashy while Spotify is mostly dark. But as you explore deeper into both the apps, you’ll find subtle differences along the way.
Play Music employs the in-house Google material design
Google Play Music employs the in-house Google material design which gives its colorful interface. When the app is first launched, you’ll be greeted with the home page containing the songs that have been picked up for you.
A left swipe reveals the panel which has tabs for New releases, Top charts, Settings, etc. There’s not much of swiping in Play music, as you’ll find what you are looking for in the designated pages.
On the other hand, Spotify has a dark interface — completely opposite of the colorful Play Music.
While it also follows Google’s Material design, it’s a mellowed down version. Launching the app initially, lands you in the home page containing playlists based on your music taste and a few more inspired by the recently played songs.
Settings, Library, and Radio can all be found in the lower panel of the app, which is quite easy to navigate around. But then, if you are looking for anything specific like your own playlists or playlists of your friends, it involves a lot of swiping. In both the apps, a truncated version of the music player is at the bottom of the app.
And if you are a new user, it’ll take quite some time to get the hang of Spotify, unlike Google Music, which is definitely easier to navigate.
Recommendations
This is one place (apart from features) which truly decides whether a music streaming app will stay on your device or otherwise. Google Play Music does note down your choices when you sign-in initially, asking about your personal favorites. And it makes the recommendations based on them.
Spotify Free Vs Premium
Plus, there’s an option in settings where you can wipe everything off and start afresh. However, that's only on pen and paper. As much as I cleaned and refreshed the app, Google Play Music didn’t seem to take note of my musical taste. It continues to ‘recommend’ songs which I have no interest to listen, in a thousand years.
This scenario is a completely opposite in Spotify. It takes note of your musical taste and displays songs accordingly. Plus there’s the Discover weekly playlist which lands on your app every Monday with the best 30 songs to match your taste.
Taking a look at the music genres, Spotify has the genres neatly laid out in the Browse section, which sadly (again) wasn’t there in Play Music, which is a tad disappointing for me.
All in all, if I have to pick a winner here, Spotify nails it when it comes to presenting the best songs out there.
Features
Features are the second best thing to look for in a music app. It wouldn’t come as a surprise if I say that both the apps are feature rich. If Google Play Music allows you to choose the sound quality over both Wi-Fi and mobile network, Spotify goes ahead and lets you lower the gap between two songs (crossfade).
If Play Music lets you manage the device location, Spotify allows you to track your songs using Last.fm
On the other hand, if Play Music lets you manage the device location, Spotify allows you to track your songs using Last.fm. Aforesaid, Spotify you can easily discover new music through the Discover Weekly playlist feature and what makes it even better is that these songs are based on your listening habits .
If you ask me, Spotify is the main reason which lessens my Monday morning blues. But when it comes to the main differences, there are a few that should help you decide.
For instance, Google Music has the Google advantage and lets you watch YouTube videos of most of the songs. All you need to do is tap on the three dot menu and select Watch video. Spotify doesn’t have this feature, though it contains a handful of videos under the Videos Genre.
Another notable difference is Playlist — rather the creation of playlists. Spotify has a boatload of features when it comes to playlist — collaborative playlist, secret playlist, organize and arrange them or import playlist even in the free version.
On the contrary, Play Music doesn’t let you create playlists on the free version, but it does let you save an already built playlist to the library.
So, here I think, it’s a better option to side with Spotify, for it allows you to handpick the songs that you would listen.
Also See: 21 Spotify Tips and Tricks for Power Users
Offline Listening
When it comes to enjoying music when you're off the grid, Spotify will let you enjoy that luxury only when you upgrade to the Spotify Premium version. It lets you download upto 3000+ songs per device on 3 different devices.
Similarly, Google Music will let you enjoy the benefits of offline listening only when you have subscribed to the music streaming app.
Desktop App
Yes, I understand that our smartphones have become our outboard brains these days. But then, let's not forget the dependence on desktop/laptops. So, if you'd rather spend your time listening to music while workin, the good news is that Spotify has a desktop app both for Mac OS and Windows.
Other than that, Google Music doesn't have an app of its own — it's browser-based for desktop users. Spotify app long load time for. However, there are a couple of third-party apps which support Google Play Music. One such example is the Google Play Music Desktop Player.
At the end of day, it's the ease of use which matters
Both these desktop apps rescues you from the fringes of the web player. At the end of day, it's the ease of use which matters. You wouldn't want to hunt for the right tab on your browser to stop/play a song, right?
Syncing Local Music Collection
If you have a huge collection of local songs, worry not, Play Music has you covered. It allows adding up to a whopping 50,000 songs to your account. That’s pretty impressive, right? But the catch is, it has to be done through the web version.
Spotify Premium Vs Regular
Similarly, Spotify lets you only sync your personal music files only through the web version.
Pricing
Price is an important factor when it comes to making the leap for the Premium version. Spotify Premium version is priced at $9.99, with a family account costing as much as $14.99. The family plan can have as many as six members. What’s more, there is even a student discount amounting to 50%.
On the other hand, Google Play Music lets you have a free 30 days free trial after which you can upgrade to the premium version at $9.99 and the family plan (six members) is also same at $14.99. Plus, Presently, Google Play Music is running a deal where the music streaming app is available for a free trial of up to 90 days.
On the free trial, you can still listen to songs on Google Music, but it'll be limited to the radio stations and the locally saved music. Please note that radio station music come with ads. On the bright side, radio stations aid in music discovery, as it plays similar songs from a particular playlist or artist.
So, as you can see there’s not much difference in the price, but in Google Play Music you get YouTube Red bundled with the music app.
Also See: Netflix vs YouTube Red: Should You Subscribe to One or Both?
That’s a Wrap!
So, that was pretty much the difference between the top music streaming services— Google Play Music and Spotify. If you ask me, considering that both the app prices are same, I would rather side with Spotify for its features and songs recommendations. Because at the end of the day, searching manually through a huge database of songs isn’t really my cup of tea.
See Next: 13 Google Play Music Tips and Tricks for Best Music ExperienceSpotify Free Vs Premium 2017 Tax SoftwareThe above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#Android apps #ListsDid You Know
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