Tidal Releases Apple Watch App With Offline Playback and More

[MacRumors]

Tidal this week released an Apple Watch app, allowing subscribers to stream music and control playback directly on their wrist, without an iPhone nearby. The app is available through the App Store on watchOS.

Tidal on the Apple Watch provides access to tracks, albums, playlists, and downloaded content that can be listened to offline from anywhere without internet connectivity. Apple Music also offers offline playback on the Apple Watch, as does Spotify starting last week, so this feature is consistent with other streaming music services.

Launched in 2014, Tidal has a catalog of over 70 million songs. One of the platform's unique advantages was high-fidelity audio, but Apple Music will start offering lossless audio to subscribers in June at no additional cost.

Article Link: Tidal Releases Apple Watch App With Offline Playback and More

 

[kenni417]

tidal?? what's that????

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Tidal? Who?

 

[dannyyankou]

Cool so you can hold how many lossless tracks on the Apple Watch, 5?

 

[christojean]

Apple Music Hi-Fi got the competitors shook lol

 

[Feyl]

Suddenly so much care. Worried much?

 

[dasmb]

We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by subscribers to continuously add to that library.

When services bump up quality "for free," you have to assume they won't be actively seeking out these masters (because who would go out and do more work for the same income). I suspect on Apple Music we'll see albums that had SACD releases and maybe new releases on high def audio...but that we won't see the weekly releases of back catalog high definition remasters we've seen on TIDAL.

Anyhow, all this high def audio talk doesn't bode well for Tidal. As a music app and service it's just not as good. I pay for the increased audio quality and the EXCELLENT albums notes and credits...but eventually it won't make sense to continue doing so, as I also pay for Spotify (family plan + excellent AI curation)

 

[abbstrack]

We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by listeners to continuously add to that library.

When services bump up quality "for free," you have to assume they won't be actively seeking out these masters (because who would go out and do more work for the same income). I suspect on Apple Music we'll see albums that had SACD releases and maybe new releases on high def audio...but that we won't see the weekly releases of back catalog high definition remasters we've seen on TIDAL.

Anyhow, all this high def audio talk doesn't bode well for Tidal. As a music app and service it's just not as good. I pay for the increased audio quality and the EXCELLENT albums notes and credits...but eventually it won't make sense to continue doing so, as I also pay for Spotify (family plan + excellent AI curation)

Serious question - What's not so good about it? I've only used it and spotify, and stuck with Tidal for the hifi. What makes apple music 'good' that Tidal is missing?

 

[nicho]

We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by listeners to continuously add to that library.

When services bump up quality "for free," you have to assume they won't be actively seeking out these masters (because who would go out and do more work for the same income). I suspect on Apple Music we'll see albums that had SACD releases and maybe new releases on high def audio...but that we won't see the weekly releases of back catalog high definition remasters we've seen on TIDAL.

Anyhow, all this high def audio talk doesn't bode well for Tidal. As a music app and service it's just not as good. I pay for the increased audio quality and the EXCELLENT albums notes and credits...but eventually it won't make sense to continue doing so, as I also pay for Spotify (family plan + excellent AI curation)

question - who does those remasters, Tidal or the record label?

One gets the feeling that, with so many services announcing lossless at the same time, this is an industry thing. A remaster for tidal can be put on Apple Music and Spotify at the same time. It doesn’t need threemastering

 

[MauiPa]

Cool so you can hold how many lossless tracks on the Apple Watch, 5?

None. It connects via Bluetooth silly

 

[richpjr]

Too little, too late.

 

[TMRJIJ]

It’s over Tidal. Your competitors have just beaten you at your own game.

 

[nvmls]

Good riddance Tidal.

 

[christojean]

Serious question - What's not so good about it? I've only used it and spotify, and stuck with Tidal for the hifi. What makes apple music 'good' that Tidal is missing?

Convenience. If you’re an iPhone owner the integration is unparalleled. The only thing Apple Music needs now is a remote feature like Spotify Connect and it’s perfect.

 

[MauiPa]

We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by subscribers to continuously add to that library.

When services bump up quality "for free," you have to assume they won't be actively seeking out these masters (because who would go out and do more work for the same income). I suspect on Apple Music we'll see albums that had SACD releases and maybe new releases on high def audio...but that we won't see the weekly releases of back catalog high definition remasters we've seen on TIDAL.

Anyhow, all this high def audio talk doesn't bode well for Tidal. As a music app and service it's just not as good. I pay for the increased audio quality and the EXCELLENT albums notes and credits...but eventually it won't make sense to continue doing so, as I also pay for Spotify (family plan + excellent AI curation)

Ummm. Professionally recorded Music is recorded on a high definition master. The masters are processed to the desired format. CD quality can be a few formats including high definition (see Deutsche Grammophone for one) the high definition versions. Apple has its own masters and has for some time. So in summary, the new high def versions may simply be uncompressed CD quality, but there are also many exiting hi res albums in catalogs. That is what Tidal has been about for years

and, you know computers, are used to create new versions so it’s not that expensive. There is a good white paper on Apple’s digital masters somewhere, I’m sure there are others as well

 

[The Barron]

tidal?? what's that????

I've seen the awesome tidal activity at the Bay of Fundy. 😝 Is that it?

 

[carrrrrlos]

Tidal who?

 

[Tofupunch]

Cool so you can hold how many lossless tracks on the Apple Watch, 5?

wait til you try to update your apple watch. You'll have to delete those 5 songs..and EVERYTHING on your watch. You will have to individually delete all your messages or if you're like me, just reset the dang thing, update, then restore.

 

[MauiPa]

Convenience. If you’re an iPhone owner the integration is unparalleled. The only thing Apple Music needs now is a remote feature like Spotify Connect and it’s perfect.

Like now playing? That seems to work better than connect for me. I do agree that connect is better on your non-owned devices in that it can temporarily use your id to play, much like airplay but it hands off to the other device. 6 to 1 a half dozen the other

 

[ScottishDuck]

We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by subscribers to continuously add to that library.

When services bump up quality "for free," you have to assume they won't be actively seeking out these masters (because who would go out and do more work for the same income). I suspect on Apple Music we'll see albums that had SACD releases and maybe new releases on high def audio...but that we won't see the weekly releases of back catalog high definition remasters we've seen on TIDAL.

Anyhow, all this high def audio talk doesn't bode well for Tidal. As a music app and service it's just not as good. I pay for the increased audio quality and the EXCELLENT albums notes and credits...but eventually it won't make sense to continue doing so, as I also pay for Spotify (family plan + excellent AI curation)

Unfortunately Tidal is fairly regularly criticised for the quality of their master tracks.

 

[Feyl]

We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by subscribers to continuously add to that library.

When services bump up quality "for free," you have to assume they won't be actively seeking out these masters (because who would go out and do more work for the same income). I suspect on Apple Music we'll see albums that had SACD releases and maybe new releases on high def audio...but that we won't see the weekly releases of back catalog high definition remasters we've seen on TIDAL.

Anyhow, all this high def audio talk doesn't bode well for Tidal. As a music app and service it's just not as good. I pay for the increased audio quality and the EXCELLENT albums notes and credits...but eventually it won't make sense to continue doing so, as I also pay for Spotify (family plan + excellent AI curation)

If I'm not mistaken, Apple has been asking artists to submit their music in master quality or at least 24 bit/192 kHz for years. Hence the Apple Digital Masters. So they have it already.

 

[dasmb]

Serious question - What's not so good about it? I've only used it and spotify, and stuck with Tidal for the hifi. What makes apple music 'good' that Tidal is missing?

I listen about 6 hours per day. With Tidal I daily experience random pauses, service interruptions and app crashes. Sometimes after an app update, Tidal will log me out and it's something of a burden to log back in again (I authenticated with Twitter).

Spotify doesn't do this, and I assume Apple music doesn't either.

 

[sdz]

Spotify it is time to update the Watch Application

 

[dasmb]

Unfortunately Tidal is fairly regularly criticised for the quality of their master tracks.

Not by me. I've never experienced one that wasn't at least better than the Hifi version of the same album. People like to talk a lot of yang.

 

[nutmac]

We'll see how the catalog pans out. With higher-than-CD quality audio, you need to go back to the original masters (most of the tracks on musics services are the equivalent of ripping CDs). This is a costly, physical process requiring expert technicians and recording engineers.

Tidal's actually got a fairly decent and ever growing library of "Master" quality albums -- in part because they are incentivized by subscribers to continuously add to that library.

Nice write up but I suspect that's essentially what Apple is doing with Hi-Res Lossless. They are probably based on "High-Resolution Masters" from Apple Digital Masters program. This program does not mandate 24-bit 192 kHz, however. But with about 70% of the songs in Apple's 70 million+ songs created with Apple Digital Masters, I suspect Apple will quickly surpass Tidal's Master Quality Audio (MQA)'s library of about 30,000 songs.

Edit: MQA is very controversial. 3 key points: (1) MQA is not lossless, (2) MQA adds distortion, and (3) MQA does not always use high sample master. It's essentially a scam.