Ok, I tried Tidal, and…(and “premium” audio too)

[CDennis100]

In my 20s and 30s I was pretty tech savvy…kinda up to date on audio technology. I’m 47 now and honestly, think my hearing is starting to go a little….prob too much teenage Metallica on “10”.

So I downloaded tidal and subscribed for three months for a buck. After a few minutes of config, I was playing some NIN and toggled over to some old Dylan and then some Kinks. I did this using Wi-Fi in my garage and listened to the hifi sound. I then took a drive and it seems the hifi downgraded to basic. I’m a new user so I have the free first year LTE package. Should it have stayed on hifi? Don’t know. Don’t have the patience to check if it didn’t work automatically.

Will I renew? No. Freaking. Way.
I’m not as up on technology and don’t have as much patience figuring stuff out. I want to turn music on and hear the stuff I like. Tidal, to me, was a total miss.

Things I liked:
Even to my aging ears, I do think the hifi sound was a little better. And that’s where it ends.

Things I didn’t:
1. User interface sucked.
2. Can songs for a single artist be shuffled? Or do I just go down the list?
3. Can my favorite artists be shuffled? Or am I stuck listening to the entire catalogue?
4. Interface wasn’t intuitive. I read about pre-downloading but couldn’t find how/where to do that. Maybe then I’d get high quality stuff?
5. Should it have played hifi during my drive? I couldn’t figure that out and lost interest. What good is it if I can only listen to hifi in my garage on Wi-Fi. Sync to my phone hotspot? Too much effort. I like simple.

There is NO WAY I’ll pay a monthly fee to listen to this. At worst, I’ll just log into wife’s XM subscription service (5 a month and we can share at that rate) and play that through my phone, or just use the FREE streaming that’s included….that’s good enough for me.

Lastly…I didn’t drive the base M3 RWD to be able to compare the basic to “premium” audio but in my opinion, the stock Bose systems in my recent Infiniti Q50 and 21 Tahoe are both superior. Deeper and more rich sounding vs. Tesla “premium”. I’m not complaining, it’s good…but not as good as I expected before I took delivery and heard the system for the first time. It’s just good…not exceptional…but maybe way better than stock M3SR? Don’t know..don’t care.

Out.

 

[AcidTest]

I've been using Tidal at home as my preferred streaming service for several years now... and I pretty much agree. The Tesla app needs a lot of work both in UI ease of use, and technical issues. Spotify's interface is far better. Tidal works fine for me on my PC (or Mac) via web browser or the MacOS app, but in the Tesla version they carried some stuff over that they should NOT have, and didn't carry over some stuff they SHOULD have. Big example - "My Collection" Artists page is shown in chronological order that I added them and doesn't give options to display A-Z as the web/app do.

To some of your points:

1) Agree 100%. It's cluttered and hard to use in an environment where you really can't afford that. Too much lazy carry over of their attempted curated/recommended lists etc. and too much space wasted with that.
2) I did not see a way to shuffle an artist OR play "radio", both of which I can do in web/app.
4) The downloading thing IMO is a non-starter. Way too much effort and planning, way too little info. (How much of this can you even do, where is it stored?)
5) I suspect it's trying to use a higher bit rate and getting hung up on bandwidth somewhere in the chain. This is frequently causing dropouts or just not playing for me.

 

[trusaleen1]

I emailed Tidal yesterday in regards to the shuffle and will it play HiFi over LTE and/or Bluetooth. Here was their response:

"I see that your account was registered with a HiFi Subscription. To understand the sound quality we offer, please view information on the following site: https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/...What-Audio-Quality-Do-TIDAL-HiFi-Plans-Offer-

Also, HiFi is the highest streaming quality available when using Bluetooth.

I certainly understand your desire for a shuffle option for your Tesla but I am very sorry that we do not have the Shuffle Feature in Tesla at this time. I will be sure to forward your feedback to our Product team to let them know of your interest! We will certainly keep your suggestion on file for future consideration.

While I cannot provide an immediate response confirming the status of your request, please know that feedback like yours is truly appreciated and helps us shape TIDAL to fit the wants and needs of our members.

Let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime, I’m happy to help.

Thank you for choosing TIDAL, we appreciate your membership. Have a great rest of your day!"

 

[Tezlowski]

I emailed Tidal yesterday in regards to the shuffle and will it play HiFi over LTE and/or Bluetooth. Here was their response:

"I see that your account was registered with a HiFi Subscription. To understand the sound quality we offer, please view information on the following site: https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/...What-Audio-Quality-Do-TIDAL-HiFi-Plans-Offer-

Also, HiFi is the highest streaming quality available when using Bluetooth.

I certainly understand your desire for a shuffle option for your Tesla but I am very sorry that we do not have the Shuffle Feature in Tesla at this time. I will be sure to forward your feedback to our Product team to let them know of your interest! We will certainly keep your suggestion on file for future consideration.

While I cannot provide an immediate response confirming the status of your request, please know that feedback like yours is truly appreciated and helps us shape TIDAL to fit the wants and needs of our members.

Let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime, I’m happy to help.

Thank you for choosing TIDAL, we appreciate your membership. Have a great rest of your day!"

Damn, I’m just getting started on Tidal and the quality is definitely far superior but lacking a shuffle feature is seriously mind-boggling in 2021/22… thanks for the info, hope they update that soon.

 

[Blackbart]

In my 20s and 30s I was pretty tech savvy…kinda up to date on audio technology. I’m 47 now and honestly, think my hearing is starting to go a little….prob too much teenage Metallica on “10”.

So I downloaded tidal and subscribed for three months for a buck. After a few minutes of config, I was playing some NIN and toggled over to some old Dylan and then some Kinks. I did this using Wi-Fi in my garage and listened to the hifi sound. I then took a drive and it seems the hifi downgraded to basic. I’m a new user so I have the free first year LTE package. Should it have stayed on hifi? Don’t know. Don’t have the patience to check if it didn’t work automatically.

Will I renew? No. Freaking. Way.
I’m not as up on technology and don’t have as much patience figuring stuff out. I want to turn music on and hear the stuff I like. Tidal, to me, was a total miss.

Things I liked:
Even to my aging ears, I do think the hifi sound was a little better. And that’s where it ends.

Things I didn’t:
1. User interface sucked.
2. Can songs for a single artist be shuffled? Or do I just go down the list?
3. Can my favorite artists be shuffled? Or am I stuck listening to the entire catalogue?
4. Interface wasn’t intuitive. I read about pre-downloading but couldn’t find how/where to do that. Maybe then I’d get high quality stuff?
5. Should it have played hifi during my drive? I couldn’t figure that out and lost interest. What good is it if I can only listen to hifi in my garage on Wi-Fi. Sync to my phone hotspot? Too much effort. I like simple.

There is NO WAY I’ll pay a monthly fee to listen to this. At worst, I’ll just log into wife’s XM subscription service (5 a month and we can share at that rate) and play that through my phone, or just use the FREE streaming that’s included….that’s good enough for me.

Lastly…I didn’t drive the base M3 RWD to be able to compare the basic to “premium” audio but in my opinion, the stock Bose systems in my recent Infiniti Q50 and 21 Tahoe are both superior. Deeper and more rich sounding vs. Tesla “premium”. I’m not complaining, it’s good…but not as good as I expected before I took delivery and heard the system for the first time. It’s just good…not exceptional…but maybe way better than stock M3SR? Don’t know..don’t care.

Out.

Interesting and thanks for that update. I’ve had model 3’s with both the premium and partial-premium sound systems (we had them at the same time) and they are (IMO) virtually identical and (again IMO) both very average. Not bad but given all the “Elon is an audiophile and won’t put up with anything less than awesome sound systems” chatter - very underwhelming. Still love the cars. But sound system is meh.

 

[Knightshade]

FWIW it sounds great playing full quality FLAC files from USB..... low-quality streaming or bluetooth not so much.

And you can shuffle with local USB music content too.

 

[CDennis100]

So, after tinkering a bit it’s slowly starting to grow on me….figuring some stuff out. Interface still SUCKS.

 

[Mikecm1]

You have to download your playlists to listen to hifi on the road.

 

[trusaleen1]

You have to download your playlists to listen to hifi on the road.

Or use Bluetooth

 

[lensovet]

Or use Bluetooth

BT by definition caps out at 256 kbps AAC, how is that hifi? It's just standard Apple Music/Spotify rates.

 

[Canyonero]

You have to download your playlists to listen to hifi on the road.

I’ve read you can stream HiFi if you use a Wi-Fi hotspot, haven’t confirmed this yet though. Agree that the downloading thing is super inconvenient and limiting, and having to set up my phone’s hotspot every time I start a drive isn’t a great workaround either.

 

[jakimo]

I’d think Tidal appeals more to album listeners, rather than song listeners

 

[KindaFruity]

I'm one of those weirdos who pay both Spotify and Tidal (and I have Apple Music through a bundle deal), so I use both interchangeably.

I use Spotify for casual listening in the car, and I have a couple of albums and a playlist or two downloaded ready to go in Tidal. To me, with just standard music in master quality, I couldn't notice a difference in the car, but certain albums I can, and those are the ones I have downloaded--and I typically listen to albums in order.

 

[skshimer]

I covered some of my findings about Tidal last month. To listen to HiFI you must download the music while connected to WiFi and then when on LTE you can play the downloaded lossless music. You can also tether the Tesla to your hotspot and play HiFI lossless music while driving (About 25 Mb per song). When listening to streaming music on LTE the HiFi symbol disappears and the stream is probably 96 kbps, the same as the Spotify stream on LTE.
It took a couple of iterations before the Spotify app worked well so hopefully the Tidal app will also improve.

 

[Canyonero]

I covered some of my findings about Tidal last month. To listen to HiFI you must download the music while connected to WiFi and then when on LTE you can play the downloaded lossless music. You can also tether the Tesla to your hotspot and play HiFI lossless music while driving (About 25 Mb per song). When listening to streaming music on LTE the HiFi symbol disappears and the stream is probably 96 kbps, the same as the Spotify stream on LTE.
It took a couple of iterations before the Spotify app worked well so hopefully the Tidal app will also improve.

I don’t think the Spotify app ever worked well, right up to the latest update when I started using Tidal. But in any case I hope you’re right.

I think this interface is decent but still missing some functionality that you find on the desktop versions, which the Tesla screen seems large enough to mimic more closely.

Do we know who’s in charge of developing these built-in third party apps? Is it Spotify/Tidal or is Tesla doing it themselves?

 

[Zacster]

Everybody wants the Tidal app to have feature "xyz" because that is how I use it at home or how I use Spotify, or Qobuz, or Apple or Amazon. I would say though that it has enough features to keep me occupied for a long time with what it has. No shuffle? I listen to either albums, where I would never shuffle, or to playlists which are by default already shuffled in some way. If it is a Tidal curated list I have no idea what is coming next anyway. And at the end of a list it just keeps playing music selected for you, which isn't always a great selection but it just keeps on coming.

I've tethered to my phone wifi and it will work in hifi mode that way. The only problem is the car and phone don't connect by default, I always have to make sure the phone is on the hot point setup page, and the car is in park or I need to manually turn on wifi. And turning on wifi is another Tesla annoyance now, they moved the wifi/lte icon from the top right of the screen to an item buried in the software menu.

 

[Gasaraki]

I use Tidal in the car and to work around the short comings just needs more planning. I use the Windows app, make playlists, like my favored songs, certain artists, etc and then go to the car and have it download. I have a playlist that's over 400 songs and it all downloads in to the car and play in Hi-Fi. I have no idea where is goes but it stays downloaded.

 

[Tez~La]

Can you download and maintain individual songs?
Does it download the the Tesla USB or to your phone?

 

[Canyonero]

Can you download and maintain individual songs?
Does it download the the Tesla USB or to your phone?

At this point it seems like you can download albums or playlists but not individual songs, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I think it downloads to the Tesla's internal storage, which is different from any USB drives connected in the console or glovebox. I'm not sure how much storage that is, others have said they can get about 500 songs downloaded. If I had to guess, this seems unlikely to change because if they let you download it to an external storage you'd be able to take the files and rip them for your own use, which Tidal surely doesn't want.

Best experience so far seems to be using the phone as a WiFi hotspot, and then all songs will stream in HiFi without the need to download. But it's a clumsy extra step for sure.

 

[andrewsjra]

I don’t think the Spotify app ever worked well, right up to the latest update when I started using Tidal. But in any case I hope you’re right.

I think this interface is decent but still missing some functionality that you find on the desktop versions, which the Tesla screen seems large enough to mimic more closely.

Do we know who’s in charge of developing these built-in third party apps? Is it Spotify/Tidal or is Tesla doing it themselves?

Tesla builds these apps. I reached out to Spotify when it was first available to us here in the U.S. to report some issues and they told me to contact Tesla. Frustrating as I now have a buffering issue with Tidal trying load songs on LTE. I may have fo go back to Spotify because of this which was decent prior to V11. Not sure if the buffering will happen with Spotify.