Tidal Playlists within Control4

[BY96]

This might be an issue I need to address with Tidal, but since I know there are some of you who use Tidal within Control4, I thought I would start here. 

I am using a family plan for Tidal, but my account is the one registered with Control4. I created a playlist for my wife within my account and then sent it to her for her to use on the Tidal app on her phone. She then added some songs to the playlist and sent it back to me so that I could replace the one I had for her with the new one within my account, so her new playlist would be reflected within Control4. However, I discovered that the shortcut for her playlist no longer worked in the C4 app even though her new playlist had the exact same name as the old one. I figured the shortcut would point to the name, and since the new playlist had the same name, it would find it. Apparently, I was wrong, so any time my wife updates her playlist and sends it to me for integration with Control4, I have to make create new shortcuts.

Here is my question... Is there a better way of handling this situation that I am not seeing? I really wish Tidal had shared playlists that could be edited by more than one person, but that is not the case. (And no, I have no interest in switching to a different service that has shared playlists.)

Thanks for any suggestions. 

[SpencerT]

1 hour ago, BY96 said:

This might be an issue I need to address with Tidal, but since I know there are some of you who use Tidal within Control4, I thought I would start here. 

I am using a family plan for Tidal, but my account is the one registered with Control4. I created a playlist for my wife within my account and then sent it to her for her to use on the Tidal app on her phone. She then added some songs to the playlist and sent it back to me so that I could replace the one I had for her with the new one within my account, so her new playlist would be reflected within Control4. However, I discovered that the shortcut for her playlist no longer worked in the C4 app even though her new playlist had the exact same name as the old one. I figured the shortcut would point to the name, and since the new playlist had the same name, it would find it. Apparently, I was wrong, so any time my wife updates her playlist and sends it to me for integration with Control4, I have to make create new shortcuts.

Here is my question... Is there a better way of handling this situation that I am not seeing? I really wish Tidal had shared playlists that could be edited by more than one person, but that is not the case. (And no, I have no interest in switching to a different service that has shared playlists.)

Thanks for any suggestions. 

I'd suggest setting up a sync through soundiiz (or something similar) as opposed to deleting and re+adding playlist. 

[BY96]

2 minutes ago, SpencerT said:

I'd suggest setting up a sync through soundiiz (or something similar) as opposed to deleting and re+adding playlist. 

I have heard of such a thing, but thought it was intended only for transferring your playlist from one service to another. I will look into it, but please elaborate on how this would work for my purposes. Thanks!

[SpencerT]

25 minutes ago, BY96 said:

I have heard of such a thing, but thought it was intended only for transferring your playlist from one service to another. I will look into it, but please elaborate on how this would work for my purposes. Thanks!

https://support.soundiiz.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015677033

I believe (have never tested it, I'm happy with soundiiz) that freeyourmusic allows multiple accounts on the same service. 

https://freeyourmusic.com/transfer-tidal-to-tidal

[BY96]

3 minutes ago, SpencerT said:

https://support.soundiiz.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015677033

I believe (have never tested it) that freeyourmusic allows multiple accounts on the same service. At least they advertise as such.

https://freeyourmusic.com/transfer-tidal-to-tidal

So glad I asked here! This is exactly what I need. Thank you!!

I have been comparing Soundiiz and TuneMyMusic? Do you know any benefits of one of those over the other, or what about FreeYourMusic? Soundiiz looks the most expensive (but still cheap) but seems to offer the most features. 

Edit- Looks like FreeYourMusic may be more expensive than Soundiiz. 

[BY96]

The Soundiiz article seems to say you CANNOT sync between two accounts of the same service. You have to export an import CSV files, so that won't work. 

[SpencerT]

Just now, BY96 said:

So glad I asked here! This is exactly what I need. Thank you!!

I have been comparing Soundiiz and TuneMyMusic? Do you know any benefits of one of those over the other, or what about FreeYourMusic? Soundiiz looks the most expensive (but still cheap) but seems to offer the most features. 

I used tunemymusic years ago and did not like it. Soundiiz has all the services I wanted (and a much better sync vs just transfer) and did a better job of matching songs in my playlists between different services. Add in MFA auth and the ability to import into soundiiz (for keeping track of my playlists and connecting different accounts) and I was sold.

I have never used freeyourmusic.

Pretty sure all 3 have some basic tier or free trial so you can play around. 

YMMV. 

[SpencerT]

1 minute ago, BY96 said:

The Soundiiz article seems to say you CANNOT sync between two accounts of the same service. You have to export an import CSV files, so that won't work. 

you import into soundiiz (from tidal, into soundiiz), then from soundiz, disconnect your old tidal, add in your new tidal. 

[BY96]

Looks like FreeYourMusic can do it...

 

https://support.freeyourmusic.com/helpdesk/KB/View/43115812-transferring-between-two-account-on-the-same-platform

[SpencerT]

Just now, BY96 said:

Looks like FreeYourMusic can do it...

 

https://support.freeyourmusic.com/helpdesk/KB/View/43115812-transferring-between-two-account-on-the-same-platform

Cool, give it a shot!

[BY96]

2 minutes ago, SpencerT said:

you import into soundiiz (from tidal, into soundiiz), then from soundiz, disconnect your old tidal, add in your new tidal. 

Right, but this does have to be done manually. I think FreeYourMusic will allow me to automatically sync my wife's Tidal account playlist with her playlist within my Tidal account. 

[SpencerT]

I only have 1 tidal account, but I'd have to think if she set her playlist as public, you should be able to follow it or add it to your account and see her updates. I might be totally wrong. 

[South Africa C4 user]

2 minutes ago, SpencerT said:

I only have 1 tidal account, but I'd have to think if she set her playlist as public, you should be able to follow it or add it to your account and see her updates. I might be totally wrong. 

This is pretty much what I do. Set a playlist is public and share it with the second profile in the family account.

[BY96]

4 minutes ago, SpencerT said:

I only have 1 tidal account, but I'd have to think if she set her playlist as public, you should be able to follow it or add it to your account and see her updates. I might be totally wrong. 

 

1 minute ago, South Africa C4 user said:

This is pretty much what I do. Set a playlist is public and share it with the second profile in the family account.

To make sure I understand, if my wife's playlist is set as public, and I add it to my account, will it get updated in my account each time she updates it at her end or do I have to re-add her updated playlist whenever she makes changes? If the latter, then I will have to delete her old playlist in my account, which then means re-doing the playlist shortcuts in C4. 

[BY96]

Sounds like the public playlist, if it works, is the free option, but it does appear FreeYourMusic offers Tidal account to Tidal account syncing, as @SpencerT suggested above. But it is $50/year. 

[SpencerT]

1 minute ago, BY96 said:

 

To make sure I understand, if my wife's playlist is set as public, and I add it to my account, will it get updated in my account each time she updates it at her end or do I have to re-add her updated playlist whenever she makes changes? If the latter, then I will have to delete her old playlist in my account, which then means re-doing the playlist shortcuts in C4. 

This is what I don't know (I only have 1 Tidal account that I rarely use), but it would be easy enough to test.  Have her set one as public, add it, have her delete or add some tracks, see if it reflects.  I know they are trying to make the playlists more "spotify-like" (or at least they were in 2022) and this is how it works in spotify...

[BY96]

Will do. If it doesn't work, Plan B is FreeYourMusic. 

I really appreciate the help @SpencerT & @South Africa C4 user. 

[South Africa C4 user]

5 minutes ago, BY96 said:

 

To make sure I understand, if my wife's playlist is set as public, and I add it to my account, will it get updated in my account each time she updates it at her end or do I have to re-add her updated playlist whenever she makes changes? If the latter, then I will have to delete her old playlist in my account, which then means re-doing the playlist shortcuts in C4. 

Yes, it should auto update.  I set this up a few years ago when I started using Tidal and it works perfectly. I can’t recall if one had to choose any specific option to get it to work but I do remember that it was pretty easy.

That said, if you have the family plan, it is probably worth setting up multiple instances of the Tidal driver on C4 so that you can access them all and play multiple streams at once. This may (or may not) remove the need for duplicating (sharing) the playlist?

Edited July 30, 2023 by South Africa C4 user

[BY96]

1 minute ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Yes, it should auto update.  I set this up a few years ago when I started using Tidal and it works perfectly.

That said, if you have the family plan, it is probably worth setting up multiple instances of the Tidal driver on C4 so that you can access them all and play multiple streams at once. This may (or may not) remove the need for duplicating (sharing) the playlist?

Ok. This just got interesting. Based on your suggestion, I found that in the C4 app, I can add multiple Tidal accounts, which I never realized. If this is the case, my wife can just use Tidal within C4 connected to her Tidal account, and that solves everything. 

Wow! Once again, glad I asked here. 

[BY96]

It is almost a perfect solution, but for some odd reason, when I added a second Tidal account to Control4 under Management Music using my wife's Tidal account, everything works, except her playlist is not showing up in HE. I have some Lutron remotes I use to trigger her playlist in certain rooms and so far, I can't find her playlist to program those remotes. Her playlist does appear in the C4 app. And my playlists appear under my Tidal account in HE. 

Update - I copied her playlist in her Tidal account and then deleted the old one. The new one (which is exactly the same) then showed up in HE. Probably just a weird glitch. 

[South Africa C4 user]

10 hours ago, BY96 said:

It is almost a perfect solution, but for some odd reason, when I added a second Tidal account to Control4 under Management Music using my wife's Tidal account, everything works, except her playlist is not showing up in HE. I have some Lutron remotes I use to trigger her playlist in certain rooms and so far, I can't find her playlist to program those remotes. Her playlist does appear in the C4 app. And my playlists appear under my Tidal account in HE. 

Update - I copied her playlist in her Tidal account and then deleted the old one. The new one (which is exactly the same) then showed up in HE. Probably just a weird glitch. 

In theory (and I set this up a few years ago so I am a bit hazy on what I did at setup stage), you should be able to access the different playlists on the different drivers (your wife’s playlist on the second driver which is linked to you).  You do need to add the playlist to the library in C4 but this should be a once off action. 

[BY96]

9 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

You do need to add the playlist to the library in C4 but this should be a once off action. 

In the end, by copying my wife's playlist and deleting the original one, C4 saw her playlist. But I am still interested in what you mean by "adding the playlist to the library in C4." I don't think I did this with my playlist, which has always worked. 

[South Africa C4 user]

3 hours ago, BY96 said:

In the end, by copying my wife's playlist and deleting the original one, C4 saw her playlist. But I am still interested in what you mean by "adding the playlist to the library in C4." I don't think I did this with my playlist, which has always worked. 

My experience has been that playlists I create in Tidal appear in C4 under “Playlists created by me”.  I then have to click on the playlist’s hamburger menu in C4 and choose “add to library” this copies the playlist from “Playlists created by me” to “playlists” in C4.  The playlist is then available to access from programming etc.  I have no idea if this is the normal way to deal with the driver but it has worked for me!