# It Tidal worth it for car?



## Nom (Oct 30, 2018)

I was thinking that Tidal might be great for headphones or good home system. But in car, even as good as my 2018 M3 stereo is, the inherent road noise and wind noise might remove the benefit. Am I wrong?

Others subscribe to Tidal since their Tesla provided the option? Notice improvement?

Also, read a post saying Tidal needs 4 bars of signal to work? True? Would be very annoying to have a lot of drop outs.

Thank you in advance!


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## jmaddr (Apr 10, 2019)

You’ll get a ton of answers here ranging from people swear they can hear the difference to people saying they can’t hear any. It’s impossible to answer.

Only your ears and perception can decide. Tidal is offering a three month $1 or $2 (plus) subscription. Get it and decide for your ears, music listening habits, and coverage.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

I went for the $2 deal to try Tidal about a month ago and have been trying to use it and compare to Spotify.
I'm about to cancel it.
The sound quality is definitely better, especially on Tesla's excellent sound system.
They give more money to the artists.
It seems the playlists are well curated.
BUT it is not very usable in the Tesla. I find myself driving around with no music VERY often.
The higher bit rate is just too much for LTE to handle. It regularly can't load songs fast enough. And it's probably more Tesla's fault, but it often doesn't automatically retry.
And for some reason there is no shuffle button. So you have to listen to every playlist from the beginning or scroll manually.
Just not a great execution on Tesla's side and regularly annoying while driving. 
I love high quality, but function comes first.


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

Whether it is or is not better, because of Tesla I switched from Apple Music to Spotify. That was a chore and a half to curate my playlists and "liked songs" and not something I ever want to do again.


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## macmovieman (Jan 3, 2022)

Just for the car? No. We use it for critical listening, also over Sonos but can't hear any discernable difference, video's for friends when they come over, headphones and the car. We love it but would not do it just for the car.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

JWardell said:


> I went for the $2 deal to try Tidal about a month ago and have been trying to use it and compare to Spotify.
> I'm about to cancel it.
> The sound quality is definitely better, especially on Tesla's excellent sound system.
> They give more money to the artists.
> ...


I tried it for a week and canceled.

I disagree about the playlists. I found them infuriating and I could never find any music I like. I even tried working it through my phone and that was only slightly improved. I did not like it at all.


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

i had tidal at home and liked it. I like having the same streaming service on all my devices (tesla, volvo, streamers, phones) for the purposes of playlists and favourites. But could not get tidal to work on my home streamers so I cancelled it. I think i'll try Spotify, but don't have the time to do that.


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## Ken Voss (Feb 2, 2017)

I just cancelled Spotify Premium and switched to Tidal for both home and car. It only took a few minutes to make the change but now I will need to rebuild my playlists and I suspect that will take a little time. They are both priced exactly the same and the Benefits of TIDAL over spotify are:

QUANTITATIVE BENEFITS

Definitely better quality and you *CAN* hear the difference, spotify has max 320kbps while TIDAL can hit 9216kbps
TIDAL has a larger music catalog about 10 million more tracks and growing while Spotify's music catalog has been shrinking lately

OTHER DIFFERENCES THAT COULD INFLUENCE A CHANGE

TIDAL is a US company while Spotify is Swedish
Spotify supports Joe Rogan's who miss-information about vaccines 
Spotify has been losing artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell so far, there will be more
Regardless where you stand on public health information (Miss-information), TIDAL is clearly better quality and has more a larger music catalog for the same price as Spotify


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## Nom (Oct 30, 2018)

@Ken Voss - ok. Your post gave me the nudge to give it a shot. Downloaded and paid the $3 to get an extra long trial period.

I have played through my TV (tidal app) hard wired to sound bar. I have played in my car. I have flipped between Spotify and Tidal. Sometimes I think I can hear a difference. I got my wife and daughter involved. Again, sometimes think we hear a difference. Few times really believe we do. But most of the time .. if there is any difference … it is too subtle to actually notice. I can't imagine telling the difference when driving.

User interface is not as good as Spotify.

Looks like I'm not going to become a member.


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

I like having my digital sources available on all the systems I may listen too. I have/had tidal at home, but only spotify is available on all the cars. Spotify does offer high res streaming (for a price) but I don't think that is enabled on the cars. But in the car poor quality is countered by having my ears and "music brain"* available for other things.

* i can rarely listen to music and do anything else. Music draws me in like no other medium. I can have people/TV/podcasts/movies in the background while I read or surf, but with music I slowly drift away from anything else until I am focused on the music. The better quality of the music the more engaging. Run of the mill music in a car is fine. High def would be a distraction.


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