TIDAL WAVEY

First things first (RIP Uncle Phil, for real) I apologize for the title of this article being cornier than a Big Sean line from 2012.

I’ll be completely honest, the only reason I started using Tidal in the first place is because Kanye told me to–Yeezy taught me. I am definitely biased, but my feelings about the actual service itself and how much I have been enjoying it the past week or two is solely based on my user experience. A lot of emphasis has been based on the exclusive content, which is, of course, it’s biggest pull, but I found some other reasons you should try out Tidal if you are on the fence:

1. Aesthetics
Tidal is so pretty. Oh my god I am suuuuuch a girl, am I right!?? Shut up. Seriously, and not just because I hate the Spotify green color, the aesthetics for both the desktop and the mobile app version are stunning.

2. User-Friendly
Everything about Tidal’s user experience is so intuitive. Like you only have to click on a song once to play it (as opposed to a double-click with a service like Spotify or iTunes). If you click on, let’s say, 50 songs a day, on average, for a year, you are saving yourself from 18,250 clicks a year with Tidal and therefore preventing arthritis and other harmful conditions. I made that up, but when a report comes out in a few years you heard it here first.

3. Celebrity Playlists
Who knows if Jay-Z actually made the JAY-Z: FIRST TIDAL playlist, but as long as I am convinced he did it’s awesome to pretend you’re listening to a mixtape Hov burned for you. Now every time I hear Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You) I give a mental dap to the homie Jay.

4. Your own playlists
Usually making playlists is a hassle. I’m not technologically challenged or anything but every time I have tried to make a playlist on iTunes or on Spotify the drag-and-drop method has made no logical sense to me. They also have genre-based playlists and some based on other criteria; Tidal’s emphasis on playlists seems to be much heavier than Spotify which I feel like is geared more toward it’s radio.

5. Video/Social Media Integration
Just last week I spent my whole Saturday night looking up different Chris Brown music videos from his I’m-a-cute-talented-17-year-old-who’s-almost-unbelievably-good-at-dancing-and-I-haven’t-beat-any-women-yet era. I’m a big music video fan in general, so the fact that Tidal had a ‘Videos’ tab integrated into every artists page is incredible to me. Along with that is a ‘Social’ tab where you can see an artist’s Tweets, too. Not that you cannot find all this stuff on your own, but I love being able to have it all in one place.

These are just a few of the features that stood out most to me when getting to know Tidal since it’s launch. I get that you greedy internet people can get music for free wherever you want, but you can also make 36 different emails and keep swapping out free Tidal trials for the next three years, too.