Miskatonic University Press

Rdio four years ago is still better than Tidal now

music

It’s over four years since Rdio died. I moved to Tidal, as I wrote about in There Wasn’t No Party Like the Rdio Party, Then the Rdio Party Stopped.

Here’s what I hoped Tidal would do:

  • Goes social.
  • Lets me follow labels.
  • Remembers my listening history.
  • Integrates the app and the web client; being able to control what’s playing on the web version from the app is great when you have a cat on your lap.
  • Improves the tool tips on links so that when I hover over a song or album it gives full information.
  • Adds recommendations based on my listening.
  • Lets me personalize what it thinks I might like, by letting me plus and minus tracks it suggests.
  • Lets me add albums and playlists to queues.

It does suggestions and personalization now, but it’s not very good. The rest of it, bupkes. The queue is very poor. If an album has a long title you may be unable to see the whole thing. Navigating classical music is a pain, but that’s true on all streaming music sources.

I can’t get over how Spotify took off and Rdio died. Spotify’s interface is awful!

Ah well. I buy a few things on Bandcamp every month and enjoy that very much.