Stop What You’re Doing Right Now and Switch to Tidal

During the summer before my sophomore year, Spotify became a second home, the green and black inviting me to cycle through endless new albums everyday. However, my loyalty came to a crossroads when I learned about the millions Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify (2016-2025), has been investing into Helsing, a company that makes AI-powered military weapons. Artists such as Massive Attack and Xiu Xiu have spoken out against his divestment from the music industry.

Fear filled my chest when I imagined life without Spotify. I adored making Blends and dreaded messing up my 2025 Wrapped, but I wanted to listen to music guilt-free. Around six months ago, I made the switch. Though I felt like a nerd saying, “No, I actually listen to Tidal now,” the platform has several saving graces.

The first benefit is the listening statistics feature. Every day, you can see how your listening stacks up in real time, while Spotify only releases these stats once a year. Next, they pay their artists triple the rate of Spotify and directly invest money into growing artists’ careers. This year, they hosted the Tidal Upload competition, where ten users won $100,000 after uploading their original tracks to Tidal. While Spotify has a similar feature, Tidal uses theirs to show that artists deserve compensation for their work. Tidal also provides a unique listening experience; the lossless streaming option improves the quality of sound for those performative enough to wear wired earbuds around campus. 

Finally, the idea of being a Tidal listener is appealing to some because it shows that they are willing to sacrifice user friendliness in order to uphold their moral values. Sure, Tidal has glitches that Spotify worked out two years ago, but it follows the same philosophy of listening to records or CDs; creature comfort should be discarded if the ethical concerns are too great.

70,000 listening minutes later, I can confidently say that everyone should stop what they’re doing and switch to Tidal.

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Quinn Ross is a freshman in the College majoring in chemistry.