Spotify vs. Apple Music vs. Google Play vs. Tidal: Which is Best

For my listening, Tidal is a no brainer even with $20 subscriber fee. Based on all the current choices, I am going to always choose quality over quantity cause I don’t listen to my music on earphones.

Tidal is the only streaming service offering high-quality FLAC lossless and MQA files.

Fortunately, we have plenty of streaming choices available to us. Just pick one and enjoy the music!

Tidal by far is best

I'm a dreamer, not a streamer... but I hear that while Spotify is Low-Res, it has a lot of things that Tidal does not.

Tidal by far is best

+1

depends on how you listen and what your setup is--if you have top flight equipment in a living room system, get tidal. if (like me) you wanna listen toyour mobile thru headphones on the go, spotify is the bomb.

I like the Tidal site a lot, but Spotify has always had a larger library. Therefore I have both. It will be difficult to pick a streaming service as we are entering a brave new world with digital hi-res music. Roon looks very cool, and I may change to Roon soon. Many choices.... but I do like MQA whichever service is offering it.

Agree with loomis. If you listen on hi-end audio, Tidal is IT! While I'm waiting to buy a new main system, I stream Tidal from my desktop (Tidal desktop app) in my office to KEF X300As. FANTASTIC sound.

One more Tidal thought. They desperately need to up grade their interface (at least the desktop app, which is all I've used). You need to be able to search YOUR created playlists (not just theirs), and another big problem I have is that when you use the "back" arrow to go back to your playlist, it takes you to the top (or somewhere in between), but not to where you left the playlist. VERY ANNOYING and time consuming. Bad Tidal! :-(

For the best SQ tidal is it. As for the interface,I use roon, also a no brainer 

I had both Tidal and Spotify for about 3-4 weeks and I noticed that Tidal sounded a little smoother on remastered/old recordings and no difference with newer digital recordings. Spotify seemed easier to manage but I am sure, with time and practice, both would be same. Using Cat8 eathernet cable made dramatic improvement overall. For money, I think, Spotify does good job. (Not that $10 extra is lot but, I felt, I could use $120 per year savings to buy LPs).
I don't have experience with MQA, but, I have lived through many versions of digital "improvements" that never really materialized commercially except MP3. How is that for quality digital music!

Deezer. 

This list seems to be missing Murfie as well. They also have FLAC files available for streaming or download. It's cheaper than Tidal or Deezer and you can send CDs and LPs to be digitized so there's no limit on the available content. If you subscribe you can host your entire existing collection and get 12 album credits every year to grow your collection. Seems to me like the best value if you want FLAC but you don't want to deal with content restrictions.

You can try using MusConv it is a tool in which you can transfer your tracks and playlist without any issues. Just visit their wesite musconv.com.

I am very happy with Tidal via Roon.

My vote currently goes to Tidal but if Spotify ever starts offering lossless streaming, I'll be switching to their service.

For hi-end audio it's either Qobuz or Tidal or both.

Lack of a simple easy (on your cell phone) remote is a deal breaker for Tidal. That and the poor user interface. When they get those things fixed I'll subscribe.

Tidal by a wide margin.

Tidal MQA is the best 192k/24bit music. much more detail and dynamic then sportify 320bps MP3.

For me, Spotify and it is not close. I use streaming exclusively for music discovery and Spotify is far better at that. If I like an album sufficiently to want to listen on unbridled quality, I buy it. 

I've never tried Spotify so can't say that Tidal is "better", but I chose Tidal because of the availability of Master quality albums.  I do almost all my Tidal listening on decent systems and can hear noticeable differences in sound quality when comparing most of the Master quality albums vs their "HI-FI" versions even when not using a MQA capable device.  I wish Tidal catered more to my musical tastes (classic rock, jazz, electronic) and was easier to browse by those categories, but I can usually find anything I want through the search function.  

Go with MUSCONV tool to sync music files from one music stream to other such as amazon music to google play, tidal to spotify,  itunes to spotify, and more..

I can say that spotify and apple Music is the best among other based on my experience. And MUSCONV is the tool to import spotify to itunes, google play to tidal, and etc

Somebody earlier stated the Tidal interface on the desktop was poor and I somewhat agree.
I stream Tidal via my Bluesound Vault which means using the android Bluos app rather than the Tidal app.
I have compared the Tidal android app to the Tidal functionality inside the Bluos app and it is no contest.
Using Tidal inside the Bluos app is far superior to Tidal own app which yes is odd but there it is!

And as far as SQ, Tidal by a landslide.
Some complain of the search functions and limited jazz/classical library.
I have never had an issue with search and do not listen to jazz or classical so cannot comment but can state that their rock library is much larger than Deezer or Quboz right now.

Here’s a vote for Apple Music. The selection of music and the quality/resolution of streaming is just fine. After all, it’s digital.

Also, Tidal seems to have a problem with paying its royalties. https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/16/tidal-reportedly-months-behind-on-royalty-payments/

I vote for Spotify...Although sometimes I need to stream apple music to google home. 

I prefer Apple music as I switched from Spotify to it using MusConv tool.

You can use MusConv to transfer songs between apple music and spotify, I've been using it and i think it has been the easier way to transfer playlist from one to another.

 

It also has interesting features like:

-Transfering unlimited tracks.

-Transfering unlimited playlists.

-Supports over 20 playlist file formats.

 

Also supports more than 30 music services.

I use MusConv as well. It's a great tool to transfer your music. It has free and paid versions so you may try it.

I prefer Apple Music and Spotify Music. And I generally use TuneSolo Apple Music Converter to convert Apple Music to MP3 and other formats. For Spotify Music, you can use TuneSolo Spotify Music Converter, It assists all Spotify users to download songs and playlists. Once downloaded, you'll be able to enjoy all Spotify songs offline even without a Spotify Premium subscription.

For me Amazon Music HD is the best. The selection of Spotify with a better sound quality and at a lower cost than the the other HD services. I did try Tidal and the selection wasn’t there and not going all in on MQA it didn’t sound better than Amazon HD. Qobuz gets great reviews and the selection is improving. and I’m looking forward to a AHD Qobuz comparison when time permits. So, to answer the OP... NONE

Article was from 2017 so it's pretty out of date

Roon/Tidal.  My only regret is that I didn’t start using Roon earlier. As to Tidal vs. Quobuz, no particular reason other than I tried Tidal first & liked it enough that I didn’t bother to check out Quobuz (summary of online economy)

Spotify, however, seems much more social - easy to share & swap playlists, etc. - if they get to CD quality streaming, I might add a subscription 

Experimenting with some downloaded hi-res off of HD-tracks - just a couple albums to see if I can hear a difference etc (e.g., Billy Holiday’s Lady in Satin, hi-res download vs Tidal FLAC).  Don’t know if I have the right ears or gear. But experimenting part of the fun

Welcome feedback on the hi-res download sites - there seem to be about four or five serious ones. I do appreciate that people doing more & more reviews of hi-res downloads in their own right, esp. in comparison to physical editions, etc.

when the hell is spotify going to roll out the hi-fi tier they've been promising forever?