Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Sooloos Tidal

It seems strange that only QNAP cores would receive a token and Sooloos cores wouldn't. My Tidal access has survived a reboot of the QNAP, however, my public IP address is assigned by my cable modem and hasn't changed in years. Not saying a token couldn't survive a reboot. I don't have anything else on my network that would be logged in to Tidal other than my QNAP. I suspect that sometime in the near future my luck will run out.

Charlie

Hi Longitude

Hope you don't get a power cut.

Hector

Quite! Though I do reboot my router occasionally (less than once a month, typically) and my QNAP is powered down automatically at night.

IIRC, the Tidal tokens are issued at login to Tidal and are valid for a set period of time (eg 1 month). All communications to Tidal require this token to work.

So your token will just expire one day with no warning and Tidal will stop working.

You may have 'renewed' your token just a day or two before they stopped this authentication method; hence it stop working for different people will be at different times.

The agony of the unknown. Forgive my ignorance of tokens, but if they depend on IP address then why would Sooloos stop and yet not a direct Tidal connection at the same address? And if it is some combination of IP address and MAC number, since MAC spoofing is rather easy that wouldn't protect Tidal's business well enough, I assume. I take it that there is something much more subtle going on to differentiate legitimate customers from fraudsters. How does it single out Sooloos kit from other things I own, and why?

Don't overthink the token. At its very basic level, it's little more than a server generated proxy for username and password, often with a time expiry and access rights.

So you login using username/password, the server then generates the token normally with a date validity range and set of capabilities that you can undertake - such as what version of Tidal you can use. From then on, you perform your requests using the token (it doesn't matter where from, it's long/complex enough to include anti spoofing checks) and all the while that token is valid for the request that you make, you get that service.

At some point, that token will time expire (it may even be rescinded), at which point, often transparently to the user, a new token will be generated using username/password. It's much more efficient to pass a token around with every operation than to keep logging in.

Just came across this post regarding NAS and Roon by our CTO Brian Luczkiewicz:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/my-experiences-with-rock-and-a-500k-tracks-library/27385/29

It seems longer, but it has only been a month since this issue was first reported on the Forum. I will submit a post if I lose Tidal with Sooloos.

I see several others managed to respond before me. Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say, the token will be timed to expire at some point. I just don’t know when.

Just a time update. Tidal still working fine on my QNAP Sooloos installation.

Lucky you. Hang in there!

Brian

Roon crapped out on me a couple of days ago apparently with it logging me into Tidal. I had to log into Tidal manually then go back to Roon. I then found that a Roon update was available to resolve some Tidal issue although my Roon core updater had got stuck several versions back so wasn't taking updates so needed a helping hand. All resolved now after rebooting core.

But this highlights 2 things - Tidal has been tinkering with its login process and Roon can respond to third party changes in a timely manner, even if my core updater couldn't. Tidal ceasing to work on Sooloos is just a matter of time. Thankfully its ability to play users libraries still hasn't changed. The writing had been on the wall for Sooloos since 2014, so it's done well to have lasted much longer than that.