I completely understand how the frustration of technical challenges can truly lead to one giving up. I was advised to stay away from Bryston for that reason... But how a streaming service organizes music seems like a non issue to me.
I haven’t tried Tidal yet (or any other streaming service for that matter) but don’t they offer a search option so that you can quite literally access anything and everything you desire with just a few key strokes? For example, some tells me about an album or band I’ve never heard of before, can’t I enter such information into a search field and quickly access it within a few seconds?
I stuck with Tidal for almost a year for some of the reasons mentioned. MQA promising high rez streaming. A huge library of music at your fingertips. But I still quit. If Tidal had an interface like Roon I probably would have stayed. But their search function is surprisingly poor, IMO. My experience was that you can search by artist or title only, not genre or anything else. And unlike YouTube, for example, there are no recommendations based upon your history or what you have favorited. I also really don't care for their fixed playlist-based format, or at least, the way they execute it. I have found more satisfaction with Pandora's format of Radio Stations of so many genres. For example, if I'm in the mood to listen to Smooth Jazz or 80s New Wave or tunes based on a specific band, I just select that. But finding such specific playlists on Tidal is just about impossible. I do think Spotify is better than Tidal in this regard. And Tidal's "Artist Radio" feature is unsatisfactory. If you select, say, Allman Brotners Artist Radio there are no Allman Brothers songs at all, and it's a fixed playlist of 15 or 20 songs that never changes (from what I can tell). If you select to play the most popular Allman Brothers songs (which you can also do on the artist's page) again, it's a fixed unchanged thing so once you listen to it once, there's nothing new (of course you can create your own playlist, and hit the "random" button, but I like the mystery and randomness of something like Pandora.)
If you see an interesting recommendation in Stereophile or The Absolute Sound, there's a good chance you won't find it on Tidal if it's classical, but jazz you might have better luck. Looking for a specific recording of something by Mozart? Good luck. Don't think that Tidal has EVERYTHING. They don't. To be fair they do have a rich selection on some things, for example their collection of Grateful Dead stuff is really extensive and pretty great.
Finally, and surprisingly (to me) was that having a huge library of music wasn't nearly as compelling as I thought it would be. I don't need every Elton John album, I like maybe four.
