Every year, new features and technologies arrive to push the boundaries of consumer electronics further than the year previous, but very few tend to enrich our daily lives immediately, whether that's because they aren’t instantly adopted by the masses or simply aren’t useful on such a frequent basis. Thinking about how my listening habits have changed in the past couple of years, I’ve realised that one fledgling feature has played more of a role in it than anything else: Tidal Connect.
For the uninitiated, Tidal Connect lets you ‘cast’ the music service's library to compatible audio devices straight from within the Tidal app, with the songs streamed from the internet as opposed to locally on your phone. As Spotify Connect does for, well, Spotify; AirPlay for Apple Music; and Google Cast for Amazon Music (and others – including Tidal, actually). The point is that these technologies let you control your music streaming playback from an app that’s familiar to look at and operate, meaning you don’t have to rely on using the separate dedicated app(s) developed for specific streaming products.
