I’ve become disillusioned with the big-name music distributors, and I wanted to find a good replacement without sacrificing quality or selection. Price was not a concern provided it was competitive. Enter TIDAL Music, a high-quality music service for $29 CAD/mo for a family. This is slightly higher than other services, but a premium subscription assures that more money is being paid to the artist than other services.

In terms of offerings, I was able to find all of my (somewhat) obscure music and far more. A large percentage of the content is available in “Master” quality, a treat if you have a nice sound system or a good pair of headphones. There’s also a smattering of Dolby Atmos and Spatial audio. If you’re used to the high-quality offerings on Prime and Apple, you won’t be disappointed by the fidelity of TIDAL tracks.

For me, perhaps the most important feature of a music service is its ability to function as a DJ throughout the day. TIDAL makes this really easy. It provides the standard “artist” radios with non-stop streams based on a particular artist’s style. It also provides a “track” radio that does the same thing based on a specific track. But perhaps the most important feature for me is the daily curated music. TIDAL seems to be really smart. I spend my mornings going through the Discovery mix. From the input I provide through the discovery mix (liking tracks, albums and artists), I get a curated set of mixes of the distinct styles of music within my collection.

The day it separated my music into dance music and industrial/EBM, I was happy. It seemed intelligent to keep the distinct styles separate. Two days later, there were 2 new categories: 80’s Synthpop and German Metal. Truly impressive, in my opinion. I thought Apple was pretty good at choosing music, but I find that TIDAL is the best DJ of them all.

I’d definitely recommend thinking about switching if you’re tired of your current music provider, or just want to support the little guy and put a few more bucks in the artists’ pockets.