Plex tidal integration

Online Media Sources
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Ok so here’s a perfect example of what I mean that I ran into this morning.

I was on the Artist page for Radiohead in my library, on my iOS app.
I have a couple albums in my personal library, but not the whole discography.
Tidal integration is perfect here. I can check out any other album I don’t have from the Tidal albums listed on the integrated Artist page.

So I listen to a few songs of an album not in my personal library. Add the album to “My Tidal”. I stop listening to music for a bit, do some other things as I get into office and am ready to listen to music again and open to the Plex Music tab on my iOS app (which, thanks to the Home tab personalization I’ve basically replicated on my Home tab is the iPhone app is soley a music player for me).

Radiohead is not listed in my Recently Played Artists, nor is the album I was just listening to in my Recently Added Albums.
Go to All Music - > Sort by Date Added. Nothing.

In order to get back to what I was listening to, I have to remember that this was on Tidal, change servers, and now viewing ONLY Tidal content, I can see Recently Played Artists and NOW Radiohead is listed as the most recently played artist - and the album I was just listening to is not listed anywhere, I have to jump to My Tidal, within the Tidal home page to get to the albums I’ve added. (and the Tidal home page is gunked up crap I don’t want to see like Tidal non-personalized New Tracks/Playlists, etc. so it’s useless and a big reason for why a lot of like to maintain our own personal libraries still).

Ok, so now I am on the Tidal page - and for clarifying purposes, all I want to do is jump back to stuff I was just listening to - I have to go to the Plex app Music tab, change servers to Tidal, and tap My Tidal, find the album. Or, tap Radiohead in the recently Played Artists - except this now takes me to a DIFFERENT artist page, that is ONLY Tidal content… :confounded:

so my question is - what is the intention of the Tidal integration?
Is it to act as an integrated “Store” - allow us to sample other albums by artists we already have in our library, with the ultimate intention being to eventually add albums we want in our library same way we always have?
If so, great the Tidal integration does the job as-is, but the messaging on the integration is very unclear.

Is the intention of the Tidal integration to actually augment our existing libraries? merging the two worlds - steaming-only and locally-hosted? if so, the integration is very broken.

I’m kind of okay with either direction, but I think Plex should make it more clear what the intention of the Tidal integration is & who the integration is for.

4 Likes
123

I agree with this. Tidal plex integration should try to resolve the issue said above. Many times I want to continue playing Radiohead but I can’t do it easily because the last time I played Radiohead was from Tidal album.
It should be seamless integration for the sake of convenience of media browsing, and playback.
If there’s duplication between my library and tidal I would like the app to give me a choice where I would play it from, the same way currently when we have duplication of movie between servers.

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Is there a definition of soon? To quote your blog “Throw in availability on any device and your tunes are in heaven. Plex is the one place for you to access ALL the media that matters to you, including all the jams you could ever want.”.

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Got it. So basically you want the Plex tracking (recently added, recently played) applied to the Tidal content.

The intent is to augment your library just like trailers and extras augment your video library. I don’t think there is any intention to merge their content with yours. Tidal doesn’t sell content (access to content) like iTunes does so there isn’t a concept of a store so you can buy it later. It’s all streamed. I do see your point of integrating the played status.

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basically, there are (at least) 2 kinds of people who might use tidal (or any other possible streaming music provider).

  • Those who want to keep their local and their streaming libraries separate
  • Those who want a single library encompassing and tracking all libraries combined (ideally with obvious indicators as to what the source is for the particular file, like a tidal icon in the art).
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yes, this for sure should be implemented - but specifically it should be part of the existing “Music” tab. (ie not a separate Tidal area). Also, clicking on an Artist page within the Tidal view should lead you to the same Artist page- there shouldn’t be 2 separate Artist page views with separate content and metadata.

This comparison is a little problematic, bc the extras added for movies are supplemental items, not the main content, like what Tidal provides. (However the added music videos does fit this comparison). I understand Tidal isn’t selling anything, but if a Plex user is also paying for Tidal, they are paying to access that content. To me, it makes no sense to have these items in separate libraries. But from what you are describing in how it should be used - it is more like a “store”, not in the sense that you are ‘buying’ anything - but in the sense that Tidal highlight & supplements what albums are missing from your library - so it gives the user an opportunity to preview that album - but there is no way to just add that Tidal album to your library, so in order to add that album to your library, you still have to buy it elsewhere.

Which is why the current integration of Tidal seems problematic to me. You are paying for a music subscription so that you dont have to purchase music individually to add to your library anymore, but there is no way to build up your library using the Streaming sources you are paying for within Plex.

All this being said, I think the integration is a great idea. I am just trying to understand how (for me personally) the workflow is supposed to go.

I think it should work a little bit more like iTunes and Apple Music work.
You have your iTunes library, and if you are a subscriber to Apple Music, you can add any album to your library.
When you browse your library, all albums appear the same. There is no obvious difference between a local source and a streaming source and the user doesnt have to worry about what the source is, it’s all one combined library.

1 Like
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Instead of having to add artists etc to TIDAL.

We should be getting TIDAL artists content etc directly to our own library(s).

Optionally of course.

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So I was pretty skeptical on how Tidal integration would be beneficial to Plex as I’ve been an avid Spotify fan for a while now.

However after taking advantage of the 3 month HiFi Free Tidal promotion, and giving it a bit of a trial the last week, I’ve decided this is definitely something great here. Mixing 16bit flac with my already existing Hi Rez Audio library all in one app is fantastic. It’s pretty damn convenient to have high quality content all consolidated like this.

There are some quirks I’ve noticed sure, and some additions that would be great. For example mixing your own music with Tidal’s Playlists is a bit strange (on Android at least), there doesn’t seem to be a quick way of adding to Playlists between both platforms aside of adding items to queues and then saving that queue as a playlist.

Also the biggest lacking feature I’ve noticed is music discovery. You are unable to search Tidal’s curated Playlists from the Plex app, this would be a welcome addition. Also it would be amazing if the Plex Radio feature was expanded to include more artist album and track radio’s as there are a few of my top artists that are lacking the option. More discovery options like Playlist Radio’s would be great as well.

On top of these suggestions- 16bit Flac is nice, much better than Spotify, however 24bit audio should be in the Plex app also. I’m not sure I understand why the Tidal app solely has it? I’m assuming that’s some kind of contractual agreement more than a practical matter?

Anyway, here’s hoping the support for this feature is ongoing and developed, because the way I see it, this high quality content pitch definitely makes sense in the Plex eco-system, and for an audiophile like myself it makes things very convenient.

Add support to the Xbox App and I’ll be making a complete switch from Spotify.

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iTunes works differently as you are buying individual content and it actually does download those files. It’s a little trickier with streaming providers. But I’ve passed the suggestion along.

If you have the HiFi subscription, you should be getting whatever Tidal provides. There isn’t a lower-level HiFi sub. I don’t personally know if that is 16-bit or 24-bit, but it should be the same thing you get from the Tidal app.

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Are you sure about this? Reading the announcement here

It states:

MQA is Tidals 24bit Hi Rez apparently? Am I getting this wrong?

Also for some reason when using Plex the other day I could see the bitrates in the Playback Info context menu, that has dissapeared now. That was a good feature.

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Ah that. Yes, that is correct. We don’t have access to those. It’s something exclusive to their app.

Keep in mind that those MQA tracks are only available on some tracks. Plex has access to their entire regular FLAC catalog.

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Right. What I’m saying is, the integration of AppleMusic (streaming service) with an existing iTunes library. From within AppleMusic, you can add any album to your library.

When you go to view your Library, as an AppleMusic subscriber, in iTunes, or on your phone, or wherever else, all your existing iTunes library albums and your AppleMusic streaming-based albums live side-by-side with no obvious distinction what the source is. From a computer, you can ‘Get Info’ on an album or song and it’ll tell you the file type & path if it’s it local or will say iCloud or AppleMusic or something, if it’s an AppleMusic streaming album.

It’s all one unified library.

Which brings me back to what I meant by “store” in a previous reply - in the case with AppleMusic, you certainly don’t HAVE to add anything to a library - but you can browse the infinite catalog of music within AppleMusic and curate the albums/songs you actually like into your own library, which live alongside anything you’ve purchased from iTunes or manually added to iTunes. You ‘browse’ the ‘aisles’ of AppleMusic, and can select anything from the streaming catalog to add to your own curated unified library, which doesn’t concern itself from where it came. You can certainly spend time ONLY in AppleMusic and not use the Library function at all, but when you DO use the library functionality, it is a seamless & unified experience regardless of source.

The integrated Tidal experience should be similar to this. We can certainly select “Tidal” as the server, and live solely within the Tidal catalog, but should be able to select and curate albums into our own unified & seamless library, regardless of source.

2 Likes
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Is there an easy way to combine a Plex playlist with a Tidal playlist (and vise versa)? For example, I’ve created an 80s playlist on Tidal that I want to combine with a playlist of video game music I made in Plex.

I’m definitely interested in using this feature because my personal music library differs greatly than what I use streaming services for. Tidal or Spotify are great for popular music, whereas I keep my video game/chiptune/rare tracks saved locally. It’d be a dream to combine these two into larger playlists for all-day shuffling.

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You can’t convert/combine a Tidal playlist with a Plex playlist. You can add Tidal content to a Plex playlist but you have to do it individually by tracks, albums, or artists.

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Thank you! Having a Tidal membership would be an easy choice for me if I could select multiple tracks and add them to a new playlist.

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Is there a way to get Tidal to scrobble to last.fm? (testing from iOS app).
Have scrobbling turned on Plex server, Tidal website and Tidal iOS app, but nothing on Tidal played within Plex is getting scrobbled

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Yup I tried from the android app and that doesn’t scrobble either. Would be good if it did.

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Scrobbling Tidal playbacks to last.fm is definitely being looked at.

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Yeah. I’ve been playing around with the Tidal integration and despite my earlier criticisms/observations.
I do see the benefit of the current integration.

The priority items in my eyes would be:

-Integrate Tidal artists into the main Music tab’s “Recently Played Artists” carousel. so when we do use Tidal playback, we can easily jump back to the artist
-Integrate Last.fm scrobbling on Tidal media, so we don’t lose playcounts. (Does Plex keep track of playcounts on Tidal stuff?)

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awesome!
.