Pandora vs Tidal: Which Music Streaming Service is Right for You?
Music streaming is still the king since the last few years. Users get a huge variety of music streaming platforms to choose from. These platforms give access to millions of tracks that users can listen to on any device. Pandora and Tidal are two of such digital music streaming platforms that have gathered people's attention. In this Pandora vs Tidal comparison, you will get a details about each element that will help you choose between the services. Keep reading to know more.
Part 1. Pandora vs Tidal: Music Library and Content
When it comes to Tidal vs Pandora battle, the content and music library plays a major role. To begin with, Tidal is owned by Jay Z and was created for his fans. The platform earlier began with a slow start, but eventually have gathered quite a bit of attention and user base. Now, the music library of Tidal has expanded prominently by a huge number. Currently, it now has more than 80 million songs covering the best Hip Hop, R&B, and some exclusive content in the world. The high-fidelity master songs by Tidal are now in the millions too. And you can enjoy Dolby Atmos Music and 360 Reality Audio on Tidal. Apart from this, Tidal says that it is an "artist-based" platform that pays the highest percentage of royalties to songwriters.
On the other hand, Pandora's music library has over 50 million songs. When you visit Pandora and create a radio station based on your favorite artist, the platform searches for similar songs and artists. This behavior stays same irrespective of Pandora Plus vs Pandora Premium. With Pandora, radio stations are nothing but playlists. You can create their own playlists or radio stations based on your favorite music and use your friends' shared playlists. On the other hand, Pandora does not support adding separate albums or songs manually.
Part 2. Tidal vs Pandora: Audio Quality
Both Pandora and Tidal have their own methods when it comes to offering sound quality for different Tidal and different Pandora plans. Keeping that aside, most of the users believe that Tidal has a slight edge over Pandora when it comes to Tidal vs Pandora streaming quality. Tidal and Pandora are almost evenly matched when in the sound quality in there most affordable plans. On the other hand, when it comes to higher-end premium plans, Pandora seems to lag behind on streaming quality. Tidal offers 1411 kbps of CD-quality FLAC sound quality via HiFi in its most expensive plan.
Speaking of Pandora sound quality, the platform only offers 192 kbps of MP3 Audio quality all over its plans. The maximum bitrate that Pandora offers is 192kbps, irrespective of Pandora Premium versus Plus plans. On the other hand, Spotify Premium comes with up to 320kbps. Fundamentally, this means the sound quality by Spotify is better.
Part 3. Pandora vs Tidal: User Interface and Experience
Considering Tidal and Pandora plans comparison to be least important here, both of them are still amongst the highly rated players and they have nothing in common when it comes to user experience. Pandora has a simple-to-navigate interface, that comes with a lyrics feature. This allows users see the lyrics whenever they choose a song to play. In addition to this, the interface and appearance is very clean with enough space to make any good moves. Both the platforms are designed with the idea of offering the users with convenience. On the other hand, there are different factors that enable one app to get a benefit over the other. Pandora has a very clean UI, where it offers users with a clean appearance and effortless navigation irrespective of Pandora subscription price plans.
On the other hand, Tidal is comparatively messy in music streaming and navigation. Pandora enables users to rate each song with a "thumbs-down" or "thumbs-up" to signal users' opinion of the song that is played. The station adds every single rating to cleverly know about user preferences eventually, leading to a pretty customized station on the basis of user input.
In addition to this, Pandora is good at predicting which tracks the user might enjoy hearing. Unlike platforms that have rudimentary recommendation algorithms, Pandora employs more than 400 selection attributes that are merged to create more than 2,000 focus traits including key tonality, rhythm syncopation, instrumental proficiency, and harmonies. Not only does Pandora use this tons of conditions to decide the inclusion of each song in your station, but it also shows the particular reason that each song was played, and its relation to your input criteria. Pandora's music genome algorithms are surprisingly accurate to the point where it can be considered a personal DJ.
Part 4. Pandora vs Tidal: Mobile Apps and Compatibility
Both Pandora and Tidal are available for iOS, Android, Windows phones, and web. The Tidal music streaming service mobile app has an in-built audio search, same as Soundhound and Shazaam. Tidal covers almost 53 nations all over the world, but Pandora restricts the users to only one country. For those living outside the US, the service is not available to them, which greatly restricts users from all over the globe.
However, Pandora is also available on other platforms such as Sonus, Apple TV, PlayStation, Roku, TiVo, Direct TV, Amazon Echo, and Pebble Watch. Pandora has an application on all major mobile platforms, including Android, iOS, and WP7. Also, it is available in different vehicles as an add-on, many with voice commands.
Part 5. Pandora vs Tidal: Pros and Cons
Pros and cons of Tidal
Below are some pros of opting Tidal:
- Tidal has a maximum streaming quality of 1,411Kbps bit rate with FLAC-formatted lossless files.
- It pays the artists 3 times more than Spotify and 2/3rd more than Apple Music, for an equivalent subscription price and catalog.
- It provides a 50% discount on monthly subscriptions for students with a valid university email account.
- It has a good desktop app.
- Tidal mobile app has a built-in audio search.
- All Military/veteran get a huge discount on subscription.
Below are some cons of opting Tidal:
- Songs may take some time to load.
- No free plan.
- Offline isn't offline actually and might consume data.
- Paid plans can be expensive for some users.
Pros and cons of Pandora
Below are some pros of opting Pandora:
- Pandora is the best at predicting which songs the user would enjoy hearing.
- The platform easily learns what users like and dislike.
- Unlike other music streaming services, Pandora enables users to create a station from a single artist, song, genre, or album, and has a huge library of more than 800,000 songs from 80,000 artists.
- Pandora is available in vehicles and on mobile.
- It predicts what users like with great accuracy.
- Being available for free means anyone can try the service before committing to it.
- It is a go to source when users want to hear something new that they will like.
Below are some cons of opting Pandora:
- Not available outside the US
- Limited bitrate
- Limited skips
- Limited artists
- Rips artists off
- Frequent advertisements
With that, it is clear that Pandora and Tidal are two unique music streaming platforms that provide a very progressive service to the users. These platforms are some of the best services. On the other hand, there are different factors that one need to consider when it comes to choosing between the two. You need to have a close look to get a better knowledge of the best platform that would fit their needs.
Bonus Tip: Download Tidal Music for Playback on Any Device
One thing is clear that users might need a Tidal paid subscription to get high quality songs and offline mode. In such case, if you do not wish to pay a single buck, users will need a tool that can offer lifetime access of Tidal songs. HitPaw Video Converter is one such tool that ca be used to download Tidal music for getting unlimited access on any device.
HitPaw converts Tidal music into compatible format with lossless quality. Also, it converts HiFi playlists and songs from Tidal into FLAC, MP3, WAV, and M4A, for easy playback. HitPaw can be your perfect option for downloading and converting Tidal songs with 120x batch conversion speed.
Follow the below steps to know how to use this tool.
Step 1:Download, install, and launch HitPaw Video Converter on your PC. Click TIDAL Music Converter option on the main interface.
Step 2:Sign into your TIDAL account to listen or download songs in Spotify. Open a TIDAL playlist, track, artist, or album. Now, copy the link from the address bar.
Step 3:Paste the TIDAL link to the search box and tap Analysis.
Step 4:Once the analysis is done, all the songs will be shown as a preview. The preview includes the metadata info for each track.
Step 5:HitPaw offers 4 different output formats such as FLAC, MP3, WAV, and M4A.
Step 6:Lastly, tap the Convert All option to begin converting Tidal music. Once done, users can listen to Tidal music offline without limitation and restriction.
Conclusion
All in all, we just had a deep comparison between Pandora vs Tidal so that you can choose amongst the two wisely. We also saw that users can use HitPaw Video Converter to download Tidal music for getting unlimited access on any device and for offline playback on any device.
Share this article:
Select the product rating:
Joshua Hill
Editor-in-Chief
I have been working as a freelancer for more than five years. It always impresses me when I find new things and the latest knowledge. I think life is boundless but I know no bounds.
View all ArticlesLeave a Comment
Create your review for HitPaw articles