Today at the WWDC developers conference, Apple unveiled its new music service. Apple purchased Beats music service for 500 million dollars, and it’s headphone business for 2.5 billion back in late summer of 2014. I for one have been anxiously waiting to see what Apple magic would be built into the music app.
I have been a streaming music enthusiast from the “old” days. The days when MP3.com was a new start up, in which a music artist could set up a page on its website and offer their content for music streaming to anyone that would listen. I for one, was an artist with high hopes of discovery uploading tracks that my friend and I had recorded to MP3.com in my home music studio, that was actually a space I made in my dining room. Using sequencing software like “Cakewalk” that allowed me to layer tracks recorded in 24 bit 96khz, which at the time was a sample rate much higher than “CD quality”.
During this time period, “Rhapsody” music streaming was just getting started using a browser plug-in, which I believe was called the “Real music” plug-in. In order to listen to their streaming music, this browser plug-in needed to be installed which I believe, limited its listening base. Needless to say I have been a loyal subscriber off and on to Rhapsody since then. I tried Spotify and Rdio, but to me they were just copying the original music service, while trying to add a social element to the mix. What are my friends listening to? What is cool right now? Which fills it’s purpose if thats what you’re into. For me, I wanted to explore music on my own, listening to what is new and different and making my own choices. That’s why I enjoyed college radio so much, because they would go out of the norm, and play what moved them.
Anyway, you’re probably wondering what the hell does all this have to do with “Apple music vs Tidal HiFi”? The preface to this piece is just a short history of what brought me here. I have discovered Tidal HiFi this year right after Jay-Z bought it. It is a music service that offers high bit-rate streaming and downloads. How I use Tidal will be described in more detail in a future post. For right now, what I heard from the WWDC developers conference really didn’t make me get very excited because what Apple is basically trying to do, is what all the other streaming music services have done all along, except they are adding “human” curated playlists, which is something Tidal has been excelling at. I would be excited every time a new playlist came out on Tidal, so I could sample some great music I never heard before. The high bit-rate downloads are something I never heard from a music streaming service before, and it was blowing my mind. With high quality low impedance headphones, the sound spectrum was amazing, and didn’t give me a headache after a while, like MP3’s were. MP3’s have a very compressed narrow audio spectrum which quite frankly, suck!
Recently Tidal has changed in a way that I’m not very pleased about. The new exciting playlists tend to be ONLY hip hop and R&B. It’s not that I dislike that genre, some tracks I really like, but I prefer to have exciting playlists from other genres such as punk, alternative, rock, EDM, indie etc. These exciting playlists that were plentiful in the beginning are fading fast in Tidal, and I hope they get their act together as Apple tries to take a chunk out of their share of the pie.
Apple didn’t mention anything about the bit-rate quality of their new streaming music service, and quite frankly why would they? Apple is in the business of SELLING music through iTunes. That is their bread and butter. Why would they offer high bit-rate downloads if it would cut into their iTunes music business model? That is why I am sticking withTidal, which offers CD quality downloads that stay with me as long as I continue to subscribe with them. And if they start providing a superior streaming music service in ALL genres, then I would have no reason to end my subscription with them.
Come on Jay-Z, get with it will you! We don’t all go crazy for your music or your friends music. We all have varied tastes, and it would serve you well to open it up. Yes you own it, and you can do anything you want with it … but do you want to build your streaming service into a narrow genre, or do you want a music service that serves the masses? And kicks the shit out of Apple!
Update 6/9/15 Apple is rumored to have the ability to download tracks to your device with an active subscription.