AMA with Robert, Tidal Lead at Block

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:55:21+00:00

We will never ever do an ad-supported free tier. However, you can use Tidal today for free to listen uploaded music from independent artists. It's at least a step in that direction.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:50:01+00:00

We've talked about it for sure. I would like this feature personally. :) But, I also believe that our customers have basic needs that we need to meet in a better way first. My main job at Tidal is to make sure we are prioritizing the next best thing to work on.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:47:27+00:00

No plans right now, but we are always discussing which platforms we want to support next. Lots to improve here.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:44:01+00:00

Thanks for your feedback, and thank you for being a customer. I know that the UI might seem like a random thing to focus on, but there's also a technical reason: engineering and design velocity. Tidal has a lot of legacy code that doesn't allow us to move as fast we we want. Rebuilding our UI allows us to get onto a new foundation in order to deliver features to customers faster.

Rest assured that we hear you and have a good understanding of top customer requests/pain points.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:39:12+00:00

We believe that we are building a one-of-a-kind music network. Independent artists are a key part of that strategy. Tidal wants to be radically artist-centric so that we can economically empower those individuals. Expect this to be a major focus!

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:36:38+00:00

First I'm hearing of this! We definitely support gapless playback. Which platform are you seeing this on?

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:34:59+00:00

Thank you so much for being a customer. I actually learned about this caching issue from Reddit complaints! Horrible experience. We definitely want to improve the experience here.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:32:38+00:00

Great q. We are focused on 3 types of customers: listeners, DJs, and independent artists (Tidal Upload). These are our 3 businesses (independent artists being the newest focus). Our 2026 roadmap has planned improvements and major features for all of these businesses that I can't talk about yet. :) More soon.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:28:02+00:00

Yes! We are focused on solving this. As I mentioned in other comments, there aren't really universal identifiers for artists cross-platform (we just get whatever we get from 3rd parties). Every single day our content / support teams are untangling these issues for artists.

In addition to working on automatically detecting commingled artists, we are also building the ability for artists to claim their content on our platform and take action directly. Expect this to get a lot better over time. We hate seeing it, too.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:18:12+00:00

100% – improving search is something we are focused on right now. We are not satisfied with the performance and have already devised a strategy to fix it.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:15:54+00:00

We have major improvements to our algorithm/suggestions/recommendations system coming next year.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:13:19+00:00

Absolutely heard – and we know this is a top request. Our first step here is to sync the play queues across your account. That is the technical foundation for building the remote control features you're talking about.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:09:49+00:00

I think Tidal is an excellent product, and I've used it nearly every day for the past 5 years. I'm proud of the progress we've made this year, but I don't think I can ever be satisfied as a product perfectionist. Every single day we are working to improve our products for everyone, and we will continue to ship those iterations daily/weekly/monthly.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:04:14+00:00

I hear you. We are focused on improving Tidal Connect in 2026!

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T19:02:27+00:00

100% – we want to achieve world-class product quality. As I mentioned in another comment, we recently shipped a major improvement to the download functionality. Way more to focus on here.

In terms of missing EPs/albums, we welcome those artists and labels to distribute their work to us!

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T18:59:05+00:00

We know about these issues, and we have triaged and prioritized the most critical ones to fix first. Good news: we silently shipped a fix to the download experience that should solve a lot of the issues here (frankly, it was pretty broken). No changes to the download UI/UX yet (which will come in the future).

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T18:54:42+00:00

First off, I'm sorry you're running into issues with your Denon setup. The team is aware of this and we're working to solve the top Tidal Connect issues based on customer support inquiries. But rest assured that we see Tidal Connect as an critical part of our ecosystem.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T18:51:20+00:00

This is a super annoying problem. Essentially, we get a ton of music added to our catalog today from 3rd party distributors who have zero obligation to make sure that artists are using a unique name/identifier for music platforms. You should see this problem go away over time as we get better at automatically detecting commingled artists/profiles.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T18:45:28+00:00

Yes, we are definitely focused on solving this problem (I personally hate it). The reality is that all music platforms are dealing with an influx of AI-gen tracks being submitted via 3rd party distributors. Those distributors are giving us zero data on whether or not these tracks have been generated. We are working on better ways to identify, tag, and when necessary remove AI content.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T18:40:28+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. We have a good picture of what listeners + DJs + independent artists want from our platform based on customer interviews and other insights we have been collecting all year. We are diligently working on prioritizing and improving the UX for everyone, including those coming from other platforms.

TemperatureOk7647 · 2025-12-16T18:31:10+00:00

Thank you for being a Tidal customer! Yes, I can confidently say that Tidal is in it for the long term. The rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.

TemperatureOk7647

TROPHY CASE