WiMP comes to the UK/US as Tidal

[Grahame]

Lossless Streaming Music Service WiMP , now comes to the UK/US as Tidal.
 
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/03/tidal
 
Which is handy given that Qobuz has filed for the French Equivalent of Chapter 11 protection

[Tyll Hertsens]

Know a guy that just got hired as their US Marketing manager or something.  Will be getting an early comped subscription to check it out.

 

FWIW, been using Spotify and Beats for a little while now and still desperately miss the ability to surf around through like artists for self-guided music discovery.

 

Spotify is decent, but I keep hearing the same music.

 

Beats music playlists are pretty good, but it's a struggle to scroll through them and they're usually only about an hour and a half long.

 

Fingers crossed that Tidal does these things better.

 

Anybody have experience with WiMP?

Edited September 8, 2014 by Tyll Hertsens

[Aura]

I've actually been quite happy with Spotify.... but I gave them my e-mail, just in case. 

[Hopstretch]

Will check it out. Streaming is answer, in the end.

[CarlSeibert]

Watching with interest.    

[Hopstretch]

Live today with 30-day free trial. UI is a bit clunky but first impressions are the sound is, indeed, good.

[blessingx]

Promo codes and sign up started this morning. Seems to be having some server issues. 
 
EDIT: ^ What he said.

On the other side of things the OS X app is pretty bad and definitely not-retina friendly, but as Stretch said SQ good on first impressions. Most bands in first search are there (though quantity behind Spotify/Beats). 

EDIT2: The band/album descriptions are interesting...

 

 

 

Edited October 28, 2014 by blessingx

[postjack]

I signed up, at first glance it has a lot of the records I currently have in Google Play, and the android app is pretty slick. similar to google play but actually functions better. Will check out the PC app when I get home.

 

This could be a game changer for me and my listening habits if it pans out.

 

EDIT: first listen on my phone > V-Moda M100, listened to Ben Frost's "Aurora", a new release I've been listening to a lot lately, experimental electronic/analog slightly scary noise type music. Sounds really really great, I am happy.

 

THIS IS RED BOOK

THIS IS THE EDGE

Edited October 28, 2014 by postjack

[blessingx]

Just a heads up you may prefer the web player in Chrome (only browser supporting "hifi" bitrates currently) over desktop native app. The web, desktop and mobile players all seem to have been created at different times/different teams, with (at least on OS X) the desktop being the oldest ("favourites", above description issues not in browser, etc.) by far. Interesting each has different options for account settings (an avatar here, a nickname there, etc.). No obvious sound issues with any though. 

Edited October 29, 2014 by blessingx

[Grahame]

Signed up for trial in the UK

7 free days ... Not 30 it would appear ... Works for me

Initial check shows hits for most of the obvious search terms, although some of the older / non mainstream artists don't have complete discography.

Also looking at the albums, looks like they have been recently sourced - e.g latest reissues / remasters. Could be an issue if you want that album, with that DR.

And the expected USD=GBP pricing. Welcome to rip-off Britain, although I expect 'stretch can stretch to it.

Further research is indicated.

[postjack]

Just a heads up you may prefer the web player in Chrome (only browser supporting "hifi" bitrates currently) over desktop native app. The web, desktop and mobile players all seem to have been created at different times/different teams, with (at least on OS X) the desktop being the oldest ("favourites", above description issues not in browser, etc.) by far. Interesting each has different options for account settings (an avatar here, a nickname there, etc.). No obvious sound issues with any though. 

 

The PC app is disappointing. I was really hoping for an option to be able to download and store the files locally, much like you can on the phone. I know this is an issue specific to me, but my internet on my PC sucks. I have Uverse so the router is in the other room, and the signal is choppy at best on the PC. I was hoping to accumulate a large TiDAL library on my desktop so I didn't have to worry about the songs taking ages to load.

 

Having said that, the songs do play eventually in the browser, and once they start playing they play all the way through. That's better than I can say for the performance of the Google Play web app, which would get hung up in the middle of songs frequently, depending on the strength of my connection at that time.

 

I guess I could invest in a WiFi repeater or something like that, would be useful for general web browsing on the desktop as well.

 

Regarding available albums, first impressions are selection is not quite as good as Google Play (which isn't quite as good as Spotify).

 

Random TiDAL album tidbits:

 

-Only one Arcade Fire album available (Reflektor, their newest)

-All of LCD Soundsystem is available, except for Sounds of Silver! The best record is missing. Disappointing.

-Lots of newer shit is on there though, like the new Ben Frost I mentioned earlier, the new Primus, new Perfect Pussy, new White Lung.

 

I do hope they eventually offer offline listening for the PC app, but I'm happy to have it on the phone. I'm happy enough with the service to keep it for a while. We'll see what happens moving into the future.

[Hopstretch]

I do like that TIDAL talks to the car better than Spotify, which doesn't seem able to update current track info over BT.

[Grahame]

^ #firstworldproblems solved! Banish the misery of your children not knowing which particular track of "dad music" they are being subjected to, on the school run? N'est ce pas?

[Hopstretch]

#firstworldproblems indeed, but for music discovery purposes it is nice to be able to see and note which artists/songs you do like when streaming from a genre or other curated playlist while driving, which I spend a lot of the day doing in my role as breeder support technician.

[Tyll Hertsens]

but for music discovery purposes it is nice to be able to see and note which artists/songs you do like when streaming from a genre or other curated playlist ...

 

Yup. It's a simple thing, but when unavailable it can be very frustrating and difficult to do music discovery searches.

 

I like that (on the web app) you can see related artists and click through them to check other relations.

[postjack]

Well I updated the drivers on my little wifi USB stick, working much better now. The TiDAL chrome client works great, songs start in just a few seconds. Sounds great, works great. All in all a really impressive launch for this service, I expected it to be much buggier. I anticipate I'll be a subscriber for a while to come.

[Dusty Chalk]

Blocked at work (Spotify not blocked).  

 

On phone (I'm barely near my limit and only have 10 days to go through the month, so can afford a little slop)...

 

Unholy carp, they have Porcupine Tree?  But no King Crimson and no Plague of Butterflies (same as Spotify).

[VPI]

Tried it at my office but bandwidth issues were causing cutouts and downgrading so not sure it is worth the price for office listening for me.

[Hopstretch]

A few annoyances:

 

-- Mobile app constantly logs out, forcing you to constantly log back in.

 

-- LastFM scrobbling is screwy, seems to randomly pick tracks to acknowledge and just passes on the rest that you listen to.

 

-- Airplay is a pain. You have to select it in preferences inside the desktop app and if the connection drops for any reason, TIDAL defaults back to the internal speakers. Spotify seems to just follow the system output setting. 

Edited November 2, 2014 by Hopstretch

[blessingx]

For me the biggest annoyance is music discovery (as mentioned above). Its UI seems designed to hide, not suggest, new treasures in the library. Not sure if it bugs everyone equally (I went with Beats - am I the only one here? - over Spotify for the same reason), but while I can dig for titles I already know, not sure the suggested playlists and albums are enough to find new stuff.** I want to cut them slack as they're new... in the US. They've had time to sort out before arriving here, no? 

 

For instance Tidal open screen (mobile): 

Halloween Creepy, Pumpkin Party Dance, Tidal Tuesday, and First Listen SXSW 2015 playlists

Four albums covers shown without titles & descriptions (I can guess the artist for one)

 

Versus Beats open screen (mobile): 

Bjork Influences playlist, Nilsson's Aerial Pandemonium Ballet album, Ali Farka Toure self-titled album, Orchestras for Blue Moods playlist, Sonny Rollins' Way Out West album, Guest List: Sonic Youth playlist, PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love album, Shirley Horn's Close Enough For Love album, Van Morrison's Saint Dominic's Preview album, etc.    

 

 

**If I was coming straight from MOG, which wasn't updated for some time, I suspect this would bother me less.

Edited November 2, 2014 by blessingx

[postjack]

No issues with logging in and out for me, that would be annoying. Also LastFM scrobbling works fine for me. This is on Android.

Just discovered they have a shitload of grateful dead, like everything. Road trips dicks picks complete Europe 72 etc. Enough for me to probably sell off my extensive dead CD collection.

[Dusty Chalk]

Pandora doesn't do that for you, Ric?

[blessingx]

Well, haven't used for a very long time, but it's mostly focused on singles, right? And why would I want data split across services if not necessary? In essence, I guess, Beats is Pandora for albums and I'm an album listener. And I like discovery. Beats is not really structured around Tidal/Spotify/good old MOG personal collecting/tagging and favoriting (though there). It's probably me, but Tidal feels the furthest opposite. I have to do most of the work through search and in that case I'm going to end up searching on stuff I already know. How do I search for albums I've never heard of?  

 

But, hell yeah, I like the quality. Still debating, but it's the biggest disappoint (again, from the "fresh" perspective). 

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, that's a good point, you enter a track, you get more tracks like that track.  If you enter all the tracks on an album, you don't get other albums back, you get tracks like those tracks, but it's better than nothing.  I have to admit, the best I've found is "related artists", and you can get that from AMG, but not "albums" per se.  I don't think I've seen that yet.  Kickstarter?

 

Do you remember genius on iTunes?  Does anyone still use that?

[Dusty Chalk]

Well, haven't found anything on Spotify that I can't get on Tidal (the same things appear to be missing on both, with a couple of exceptions, all in Tidal's favor with one glaring exception -- Prokofiev complete piano music by frederic chiu, which has been on and off Spotify).  Add to that the lossless compression, and I'm switching.  Only thing is, I can't get Tidal at work, so I'll probably allow a month or two transition before I quit.

 

Something I haven't checked yet -- is there a way to add local files to Tidal?  I keep forgetting to check that when i'm at home.