TIDAL news (and it's not good)...
Posted by: Tallan on 16 May 2018
Out today: Tidal Reportedly Late on Payments to Record Labels
My only complaints about Tidal are the dropouts which keep occurring (less than before, thankfully, with 4.6) which has never happened via Roon into the same equipment, and what is to me poor curation. Surely it would not be hard to offer more categories so that Jazz didn't lump everything from traditional jazz to the wildest avant guard and even hip hop jazz under the same heading. Even worse is the Electronic category which could easily be broken out to things like New Age, Dance, Space Music, Dub Step, etc.
In any event my question is what to do if Tidal disappears? Is there any compelling hirez competition here in the States?
Deezer offers CD quality? Not that Naim supports it natively in the legacy streamers - the new Uniti streamers presumably could use Googlecast?
Not entirely sure if Deezer is available Stateside...
Really hope tidal doesn't fail
The problem as I see it is that whenever I mention tidal and how good it is....no one has heard of it!
I am of course talking about none hi-fi types
On top of this allot of over inflation of subscriptions and also faking listening data - Jay Z is getting desperate.
I cannot see Tidal ending, someone will buy it, Apple nearly did (rumoured).
Hmm, if Tidal went under my streaming setup would be redundant, Spotify is poor quality (i have a premium account also), Deezer/Qobuz are not native (can use Chromecast - i did and did not like it).
Regarding Qobuz. check the thread named Qobuz on legacy platform streamers. It also applies to latest streamers.
In fairness I have no issues with the subscription costs at about £16:66 a month ( for 6 months in advance payment) and it's coming up for renewal next month... just don't want them to go pop just after I've paid again!!
I do think the £19:99 month by month payment is a little high...
Apple were set to buy them about two years ago but the deal collapsed, might be a good time for them to have another go, at least it would give the platform some security but whether it would be merged in to Apple Music is another thing, as long as it would remain full-fat and native on our streamers I guess is the main thing
Tallan posted:
In any event my question is what to do if Tidal disappears? Is there any compelling hirez competition here in the States?
I think I heard a rumour that Qobuz were possibly expanding to cover the USA, and they do have a hi res service, otherwise I don’t know if Spotify is available, though not hi res.
Though disappointing to those who have committed to such services, this issue highlights one of the reasons why I have no interest whatsoever in relying upon third parties providing an online service for me to listen to music, instead I maintain my own, self-contained collection of the music I like and want to be able to play at will. Add to it the challenges in achieving optimum quality online with never a dropout, versus perfect play every time from my collection, and it is, for me, a compelling reason not to subscribe to such services. Meanwhile there are free services (e.g Spotify ) where one can go to sample new things - in my view hi res is not necessary when listening to new things to decide if you like them enough to buy.
It simply shows that the vast majority of the public are not interested in audio quality beyond it sounding reasonable, being convenient and, preferably, free.
If they were SACD/DVD-Audio would have taken off long before streaming services were a possibility.
The fact that Apple still sells/streams lossy 256 kbps AAC audio but somehow has 50 million Apple Music subscribers speaks volumes for convenience of the ecosystem - I've got an Apple Music Family subscription but I rarely use it preferring Qobuz, but all family members can't use my subscription - they could do with a Family subscription.
I'd also ask is HD audio significantly better? Probably a bit better I'd say, if something's been recorded and mastered well and suits your tastes but many things sound equally poor in HD and some things in quality CD sound amazing.
If as someone who's keen on 'best' quality I can reasonably afford for audio-visual consumption, then if I can't tell night and day differences on HD vs CD quality downloads I doubt the average person is going to want to splash out for lossless or MQA 'enhanced' streaming.
I'll continue to buy HD on new material and some old stuff where possible as I feel it 'can't hurt' for the future but perhaps I'm deluded - the record companies could easily allow access to much better quality audio but perhaps it's only hi-fi junkies who really feel the need to get a 'fix' of the scarce HD audio, simply because it's hard to come by with mainstream services.
Video is quite different isn't it, but people for some reason do want 1080p/4K material. You can see why.
Beta bettered VHS but failed. Laserdisc failed - never experienced it. DVD trounced VHS picture and audio quality wise - a clear winner.
BluRay beat HD-DVD, but streaming services with HD as standard for modern TV/Movies will win out. For many new 4k streams are much in demand - because it's comparatively cheap I guess to tack onto DRM protected streams fro existing customers with suitable hardware. I probably have/had many movies on VHS/DVD and now BluRy or 4k BluRay not to mention some favourites purchased again on iTunes Store.
Quite depressing all this in many ways as unless the market leaders adopt HD audio where available or lossless CD quality audio as standard going forwards, it's hard to see how Tidal/Qobuz etc can survive.
Innocent Bystander posted:I think I heard a rumour that Qobuz were possibly expanding to cover the USA, and they do have a hi res service, otherwise I don’t know if Spotify is available, though not hi res.
Though disappointing to those who have committed to such services, this issue highlights one of the reasons why I have no interest whatsoever in relying upon third parties providing an online service for me to listen to music, instead I maintain my own, self-contained collection of the music I like and want to be able to play at will. Add to it the challenges in achieving optimum quality online with never a dropout, versus perfect play every time from my collection, and it is, for me, a compelling reason not to subscribe to such services. Meanwhile there are free services (e.g Spotify ) where one can go to sample new things - in my view hi res is not necessary when listening to new things to decide if you like them enough to buy.
I'm a Tidal user and I'm happy with 20 quid a month. Since having streaming I've bought more music than I've done for a long time. Some expensive vinyl and some cheap s/h CDs from the web. If it's really that good why not?
Tidal is good enough on my system for fairly serious listening with ripped CD's having the edge.
It also suggests that assuming the subscription pricing is 'reasonable' either the royalties model was broken to begin with or subscriptions have been squandered/sequestered elsewhere.....
I only switched from Spotify last year in conjunction with moving from Squeezebox+ to NDX and couldn’t live without it now. Spotify is still active only because the cost of the family account is cheaper than adding everyone onto Tidal.
However, I’ve always wondered what is stopping Spotify from simply creating a premium-priced lossless service and eating Spotify’s market share overnight. Am I looking at this too simplistically?
except for drop outs tidal is good value, ,tidal must have introduced more to listen to quality music instead of mp3 headphone stuff.
Catcat posted:I only switched from Spotify last year in conjunction with moving from Squeezebox+ to NDX and couldn’t live without it now. Spotify is still active only because the cost of the family account is cheaper than adding everyone onto Tidal.
However, I’ve always wondered what is stopping Spotify from simply creating a premium-priced lossless service and eating Spotify’s market share overnight. Am I looking at this too simplistically?
We have a Spotify Family account for the same reason (i never use it), i have waited for over a year, maybe more for the rumored Spotify Lossless service, they even ran a closed beta, then it all went quite. Since then there have been many threads on the Spotify forum which dire watch this space response.
My ideal scenario, would be Spotify lossless family account, for my Naim, car and mobile.