If you think all the streaming music in your Spotify library sounds like crap, perhaps some star power can help? At a press conference in New York, Jay Z and all his celebrity buddies teamed up to re-launch Tidal: a lossless music streaming service that will cost you double what the others do.
So what the hell is Tidal?
Tidal was a tiny Norwegian streaming service that basically no-one had heard of, until Jay-Z bought it (and parent company Aspiro) in January. The service is meant to offer a premium streaming experience, with 25 million high-definition tracks offered in lossless format. Lossless is a high-definition music format that streams music at CD quality rather than the crappy music you’ve been streaming through Spotify.
Right now it has a web player “optimised for Chrome”, as well as an Android and iOS app you can use.
A bunch of Jay Z’s celebrity buds got together to “launch” the service this morning in New York. Daft Punk, Nicki Minaj, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna and Beyonce all came together to plug the service.
The catch with Tidal is that it’s expensive. You’ll pay $23.99 per month for the lossless tier in Australia. Tidal offers a 30-day free trial so you can see if it’s for you. There’s also a test you can do to figure out if you can tell the difference between lossless audio and lower-quality streaming.
There’s also a $US9.99 tier if you’re not a fan of lossless audio, but why would you jump ship to Tidal when you already have Spotify/Rdio/Google Play Music All Access/Pandora/iTunes Radio/etc, etc.
Sure it costs twice as much, but does it sound twice as good? We’ll go ears-on with the service this afternoon.