Streaming Services

Going out shopping for new music was easy when all we did was buy vinyl or CDs.

Record stores have a ‘New Releases’ section clearly marked, so finding the latest music was a no-brainer. You walked in and looked around.

Then the Internet exploded with Napster and we did our music shopping in a very different way; virtually flipping through LPs we wanted on other people’s hard drives.

But has it gotten easier since streaming audio online and high-res downloads started their inertial creep several years ago – when sound cards in our laptops or PCs were still dictating what we could listen to off our slowly-spinning hard drives – or is it more confusing?

Where do we find a place to browse new albums or releases online? There’s HD Tracks, Acoustic Sounds, and Chandos (to name but a few popular ones) for those still down to download.

But what about when it comes to streaming services?

There are music or audiophile-centric websites who have hifi cognoscenti curate their new-music picks to turn readers on to what they could be tuning into, but this (as with all things personality/taste defined) is not always ideal and can be hit-or-miss.

So, back to streaming services and their millions of offerings online… but for some this question has an obvious answer: it’s just a matter of navigating a menu system when using TIDAL or Qobuz (or other online services) or if you’re looking for an immersive experience, Roon, via drop-downs or buttons for browsing new releases. But, for many self-professed audiophiles or music lovers this can be confusing at best and frustrating beyond belief at worst. So, what to do?

To help some readers, friends and family who’ve expressed a desire for a bit of help plotting a course to new music on TIDAL and Qobuz, I’ve put together a very simple (I hope) step-by-step guide to doing so in both Mac desktop applications and Roon.

Let’s start with TIDAL. In the TIDAL app, start by making sure you are logged in and in your home directory – click on the HOME button on the left-hand menu bar. This will bring up a page that looks like this:

From there, scroll down until you see the ’New’ music button, highlighted in this screen shot:

Click it and you will be taken to this screen which shows ‘New Albums”

Slide your mouse over to the right and click ‘View All’ to see what TIDAL has got that’s fresh. From there you can start your journey into sampling everything that’s come out starting at the top with the latest and descending back through time. That’s it. Enjoy.

If you’re looking to browse TIDAL Masters (MQA) titles, simply go to the Home screen and scroll down the main window until you see the ‘Master Quality Audio Albums’ section to access these titles (if you’re paying for the MASTERS tier of TIDAL that it) as in this screen shot:

Qobuz users have it even easier as their UI (User Interface) has the ‘New releases’ button directly on the left side of the home page once you’re logged in. It looks like this:

Click on it and you’ll be taken to this screen, slide your mouse over to the right and click ‘View all new releases’

You will then be taken to this page where you can view all genres available as new releases, or click on the ‘Select one or more genres’ button to open this drop-down menu to choose your genre of choice.

That’s it, you can now search and listen to your heart’s content to all the new music available through Qobuz in PCM format up to 24-bit/192kHz.

If you’re using Roon to manage/curate either your TIDAL or Qobuz streaming music libraries (or both) then your home page looks similar to the image below. Go to the top left side of the UI and click on the three little horizontal bars icon as shown in this screen shot:

It will open a large drop down menu, from there click on either Qobuz or TIDAL as seen here:

This will open either application within the Roon ecosystem and both have clearly marked new music buttons. When Qobuz opens it’s on the top left and labeled ‘New Releases’ as seen here:

When TIDAL springs to life it’s open default is to the ‘What’s New’ tab and on the right you can toggle between ‘New,’ ‘Recommended,’ ‘Top 20,’ and ‘Masters.’

From these points you explore both services’ offerings basically as you would within each respective application.

I hope this little new music primer has been helpful. Happy listening!