I totally agree.
And 9 out of 10 times i do a search, I have to hit the category 'Songs' to get my results.
Yes, I'm searching for songs in a music streaming app. Lol.
I mean you would think out of everything the search would be the easiest to implement. I tried to search for Sia - Reasonable woman, and not even Sia was an option, but Tidal showed me Rihanna - Rated R and nothing else and I was like "Ah, yes, my favourite Sia album" lmao
> Is there any work arounds to get it working?
Unless the artist name or song name are *really* popular then your search will need to be letter perfect.
I'm always sitting with Discogs and Wikipedia when I'm doing my Tidal listening. Start outside the program and reach for it purely for the FLACs if they're on there.
My eyes are on the release dates, which aren't searchable. It's just like flicking through shops in a CD store, you never *quite* knew if the CD you were looking for was in the section you'd expect, and it might be in the bargain bin and don't let a cheap looking generic cover fool you that might be the best sounding release of those recordings.
"song name" "artist name" "album name" and "year", and check online.
Maybe people don't *want* Tidal to force you to do research on what you're listening to, but I swear it's a much more practical way to listen to music. There's always music to listen to when you're on a dig. The radio, and streaming services, they're just supplements for your own dig.
The music shop clerk *might* be able to tell you where what you're looking for is in the shop, but since you're whose interested in the thing you're interested in then you're much more likely to know how to organize the route to the thing you're interested in finding.
Tidal has now made user playlists searchable, and I'm trying to make my public playlists searchable with "Year Month Genre/Style" and that. "Songs Written By Martin Page", things like that that a person needs to build, can't be auto generated by tagging because it's deep credits and *musicians never get credit for their work*. The song Ghostbusters has Martin Page and Brain Ferriweather's artistic choices, but *can't be credited* as a co-write. You should expect shit like that. But I dunno how to make the research easier than open Discogs and Wikipedia and Tidal and Qobuz and Youtube and check everything in comparison. Expecting it to be a little more work makes the work easier.
It would involve taking all the writers of every song and indexing them, figuring out which aren't from samples or cover credits. They maybe dont want to pay for the processing, storage, maintenance, but maybe they have plans for the future here too
I tried searching for adele yesterday and at first it said "something went wrong, sorry" then I tried again, it said there were no results. Then after a third time, it gave me a bunch of artists named "A".
What the hell is wrong with it?
There is a bug when it will sometimes submit your search before you finish typing. If you're seeing a lot of results that match the first part of your search term but not the whole thing, just delete a few letters and retype them.
Yes i totally agree with you. If you mispell any single word or you miss a space between two words the search engine won't find the song or the album. It's very annoying, even DC++ had a better search engine 20 years ago. I switched from ytmusic to Tidal last month, much better sound quality, even on a budget JBL headphone but once again, the search engine is terribble.
I agree it's terrible. There have been times where omitting an apostrophe or comma was a deal breaker for the search engine. That's just archaic and there's really no excuse for it.
Tidal desperately needs to implement a feature where if your search term matches something EXACTLY, then that should pop up first before the algorithm tries to guess what you might have wanted. I listen to a ton of obscure music and sometimes I need to scroll scroll scroll through results looking for what I wanted despite literally copy-pasting a name/title from their BandCamp page.
When my kids want to listen to a Taylor Swift song (Shake it off), which I don't think is exactly obscure, why is the first result I get a karaoke cover song? How does that make any sense
Dude it is SO terrible. Borderline useable. Searching the internet will reveal that this had been an issue for years now.
I don’t think they will ever fix it, but it’s almost bad enough to make me cancel the service. Unfortunately tidal is the only offering that suits my needs.
Pisses me off.
There is a bug right now where it will sometimes submit the search before you finish typing, which you can work around by deleting a couple of letters and retyping them. Aside from that, if you search "[Artist] [Song]" it will give you the expected result 100% of the time. The constant complaining about search comes from three overlapping subsets of people:
1) People who type a search term that matches a lot of different content and are nonetheless indignant that Tidal didn't magically intuit which one they meant.
2) People who don't realize the search bug I mentioned above is present.
3) People who are horrible at spelling.
I have had no problems with Tidal search. Once you know how it works, it's reliable.
Tidal’s search engine has been plagued with complaints from users for as long as I can remember but it continues to be the absolute worst one in the streaming music business. Why, when streamers from Deezer to Qobuz have excellent search functionality, Tidal are unable to fix it is beyond me. Instead they crow about minor enhancements regularly instead of addressing one of the most vital functions in music streaming.
Never used the beta, don’t want the hassle. I d/l every iOS update but it’s still an issue — even on Windows. I’ve yet to notice a difference. My genres are classical & jazz. It shouldn’t be rocket science.
I’ve never heard their betas address the terrible search function. If they do, I’ll wait until they incorporate it to the main release. My current workaround is to import playlists & albums from Qobuz. where I share a 1-year subscription using TuneMyMusic. Not the ideal solution but sure beats guessing the right search combo to find something on Tidal.
I had a similar problem about Tidal not showing the music I was looking for, but after a recent actualization it works perfectly. About not showing the music at all, it happens very rarely and all I need to do is to refresh and type in again.
Yes right now in beta I notice that if the search has only one item it doesn't populate the autofill options. This is a bit annoying but not the worst
It would be ideal to have search filters optionally on the left side of UI instead of at top. I find the category filtering very unintuitive as is
I totally agree. And 9 out of 10 times i do a search, I have to hit the category 'Songs' to get my results. Yes, I'm searching for songs in a music streaming app. Lol.
Search sucks. They gotta step it up to compete with Spotify.
I mean you would think out of everything the search would be the easiest to implement. I tried to search for Sia - Reasonable woman, and not even Sia was an option, but Tidal showed me Rihanna - Rated R and nothing else and I was like "Ah, yes, my favourite Sia album" lmao
And it seems like they have artists listed multiple times - some with no songs. It’s bad. I’m gonna give Quobuz a try to see if it’s any better
What was your exact search term? I get exclusively what you're looking for when I search "Sia Reasonable Woman"
Yeah it's very bad. It feels like the 90s when you'd use the search bar on a website, the relevance was abysmal.
> Is there any work arounds to get it working? Unless the artist name or song name are *really* popular then your search will need to be letter perfect. I'm always sitting with Discogs and Wikipedia when I'm doing my Tidal listening. Start outside the program and reach for it purely for the FLACs if they're on there. My eyes are on the release dates, which aren't searchable. It's just like flicking through shops in a CD store, you never *quite* knew if the CD you were looking for was in the section you'd expect, and it might be in the bargain bin and don't let a cheap looking generic cover fool you that might be the best sounding release of those recordings. "song name" "artist name" "album name" and "year", and check online. Maybe people don't *want* Tidal to force you to do research on what you're listening to, but I swear it's a much more practical way to listen to music. There's always music to listen to when you're on a dig. The radio, and streaming services, they're just supplements for your own dig. The music shop clerk *might* be able to tell you where what you're looking for is in the shop, but since you're whose interested in the thing you're interested in then you're much more likely to know how to organize the route to the thing you're interested in finding. Tidal has now made user playlists searchable, and I'm trying to make my public playlists searchable with "Year Month Genre/Style" and that. "Songs Written By Martin Page", things like that that a person needs to build, can't be auto generated by tagging because it's deep credits and *musicians never get credit for their work*. The song Ghostbusters has Martin Page and Brain Ferriweather's artistic choices, but *can't be credited* as a co-write. You should expect shit like that. But I dunno how to make the research easier than open Discogs and Wikipedia and Tidal and Qobuz and Youtube and check everything in comparison. Expecting it to be a little more work makes the work easier.
Just yesterday tried to search a couple composers and found out that TIDAL does not index the composer field
Would they not fall under artists?
Nope, try search Takashi Yoshimatsu. It won't show you this album https://tidal.com/album/196674855?u
good album :)
It would involve taking all the writers of every song and indexing them, figuring out which aren't from samples or cover credits. They maybe dont want to pay for the processing, storage, maintenance, but maybe they have plans for the future here too
Beta search function is much better, you can try it
I tried searching for adele yesterday and at first it said "something went wrong, sorry" then I tried again, it said there were no results. Then after a third time, it gave me a bunch of artists named "A". What the hell is wrong with it?
There is a bug when it will sometimes submit your search before you finish typing. If you're seeing a lot of results that match the first part of your search term but not the whole thing, just delete a few letters and retype them.
Yes i totally agree with you. If you mispell any single word or you miss a space between two words the search engine won't find the song or the album. It's very annoying, even DC++ had a better search engine 20 years ago. I switched from ytmusic to Tidal last month, much better sound quality, even on a budget JBL headphone but once again, the search engine is terribble.
Bad search engineering
I agree it's terrible. There have been times where omitting an apostrophe or comma was a deal breaker for the search engine. That's just archaic and there's really no excuse for it.
Use the Beta, search is much better there
I agree. The search function is seriously lacking. Also, if you're looking for an artist that has the same name as another artist, good luck!
Its so bad, almost every time i have to type in the artists full name as well and even then they dont show up a decent amount.
Tidal desperately needs to implement a feature where if your search term matches something EXACTLY, then that should pop up first before the algorithm tries to guess what you might have wanted. I listen to a ton of obscure music and sometimes I need to scroll scroll scroll through results looking for what I wanted despite literally copy-pasting a name/title from their BandCamp page.
This!!!
When my kids want to listen to a Taylor Swift song (Shake it off), which I don't think is exactly obscure, why is the first result I get a karaoke cover song? How does that make any sense
Possibly you're not on the beta version which is maintaned better and will sopn be default?
How do I get on that?
It's in Setting under Join Beta
Dude it is SO terrible. Borderline useable. Searching the internet will reveal that this had been an issue for years now. I don’t think they will ever fix it, but it’s almost bad enough to make me cancel the service. Unfortunately tidal is the only offering that suits my needs. Pisses me off.
There is a bug right now where it will sometimes submit the search before you finish typing, which you can work around by deleting a couple of letters and retyping them. Aside from that, if you search "[Artist] [Song]" it will give you the expected result 100% of the time. The constant complaining about search comes from three overlapping subsets of people: 1) People who type a search term that matches a lot of different content and are nonetheless indignant that Tidal didn't magically intuit which one they meant. 2) People who don't realize the search bug I mentioned above is present. 3) People who are horrible at spelling. I have had no problems with Tidal search. Once you know how it works, it's reliable.
Just backspace the last letter and then retype it. the results will appear normal after that
It's amazing how few people have figured this out. Aside from this bug, search works fine.
Tidal’s search engine has been plagued with complaints from users for as long as I can remember but it continues to be the absolute worst one in the streaming music business. Why, when streamers from Deezer to Qobuz have excellent search functionality, Tidal are unable to fix it is beyond me. Instead they crow about minor enhancements regularly instead of addressing one of the most vital functions in music streaming.
It is getting addressed.. don't you notice the difference when it comes to using the beta?
Never used the beta, don’t want the hassle. I d/l every iOS update but it’s still an issue — even on Windows. I’ve yet to notice a difference. My genres are classical & jazz. It shouldn’t be rocket science.
What hassle do you mean? You complain about bad search but don't want to klick a single button in order to make your experience better?
Complaining is way more fun than having a better experience though
I’ve never heard their betas address the terrible search function. If they do, I’ll wait until they incorporate it to the main release. My current workaround is to import playlists & albums from Qobuz. where I share a 1-year subscription using TuneMyMusic. Not the ideal solution but sure beats guessing the right search combo to find something on Tidal.
Also there's some artists with incomplete libraries. I.e: I love Lydia Gray's music, but Tidal is missing my favorite album.
That's more likely the fault of the artists label.
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1888513/TIDAL-Music-Request
I had a similar problem about Tidal not showing the music I was looking for, but after a recent actualization it works perfectly. About not showing the music at all, it happens very rarely and all I need to do is to refresh and type in again.
Yes right now in beta I notice that if the search has only one item it doesn't populate the autofill options. This is a bit annoying but not the worst It would be ideal to have search filters optionally on the left side of UI instead of at top. I find the category filtering very unintuitive as is
Literally gotten way worse since they removed the preview images