When comparing the streaming market note that it is changing to a more general audio services market, look at the valuation of Clubhouse after only one year and iOS only. Spotify has been very active buying small startups like the one tuned in to letting fans do live broadcast from local sports events. Or the current bidding war between Apple and Spotify for podcast producers. Facebook has also been buying audio startups and is testing a clubhouse clone.
So to join this development will require investments. The current streaming services more or less just distribute files from a server-farm and hire Akamai to cache Taylor Swift and Drake. Qobuz at least niches in on classical and has a chance if the record companies in that market can survive streaming long term - which can be discussed.
And more interesting - are Naims software guys ready to let us listen via our Naim systems?
Tidal HiFi subscription is already at least as high as that of Qobuz (hi-res). Surely all existing Tidal Hi-fi subscriptions will transfer automatically to the new HiFi Plus (‘Masters’) top tier, and those who do not want MQA can then downgrade to the lower Hi-fi tier if they don’t want MQA.
My UK based Tidal subscription is already £19.99 per month. I most definitely won’t pay any more!
The only reason I keep Tidal is for the occasional music video and to listen to things in MQA via Roon to the Nova as my Qobuz subscription is annual CD quality Sublime and I pruchase a fair bit from Qobuz and enjoy the discounts. I keep putting off upgrading to the hi-res quality offering as it will cost around £90, but I spent more than that on 4 LPs last week which puts it in perspective to some extent.
If Tidal shift the £19.99 to CD quality max I’ll definitely be off. For now I like comparing Qobuz and Tidal CD quality offerings for streaming, and often compare Qobuz hi-res purchases with supposedly better than CD quality MQA files. Some things do sound quite different but I’l not convinced it’s hi-res/MQA encoding rather than potentially different mastering, as there’s really no way for us to accurately compare even CD quality streams and no chance for MQA vs hi-res as it’s lossy.
Apologies if this has been posted already here, but I linked to this in a previous thread - I thought Linn had removed it but looks like they’ve just changed their website content so the linked address has changed:
While I dislike the proprietary nature of MQA and aspects akin to DRM, Meridian are ultimately in business to make money - no different to Dolby, Apple (Airplay, older DRM m4ps), Google (Chromecast), Bluetooth (?) etc over the years. Maybe Roon too for allowing your device to use the RAAT. (Makes me of Joe 90!)
AFAIK there’s money in licensing such solutions on playback hardware whether this is provided in hardware or software.
The problem for MQA is that for the vast majority of users of audio streaming services, it is a solution to low bandwidth of yesteryear. I appreciate many can still not get decent internet speeds so it may help some, but they might be better off with local rips or purchasing hi-res files to store locally and play via the LAN if their internet is poor, sticking to highly lossy formats for streaming services.
OK. It survived from 2006 to 2018 without being profitable and would still exist if it had not been profitable in 18 and 19. And when it was not profitable in 20, it did not just not break even, it lost a billion dollars. Overall, it has not made a dime.
So can we agree that in the net economy you can survive for a long time without profits if there is a reasonable possibility of large future profits, yes? Which was my point.
Of course it has a large number of users - i.e. potential. I mentioned this necessity in the next sentence that you chose to leave out when you quoted me. Twitter has ~330 million monthly active users (Q1 2019), none of which pay. Spotify has 198 million in the free service, 158 million are paying, total 356 million (March 2021).
First of all, you talked about the streaming market as a whole in your post, not Tidal. So this was what I replied to:
Yes, Tidal may be shaky, but Jack Dorsey just bought a majority stake and he has all the money to burn that he wants. I doubt Dorsey is after quick profits. (Edit: I think it’s more likely he is a Roon customer )
The business model for these companies is mainly to outlive the competition without too much damage, when they survive the chaotic stage of the market they will be king. It’s the same model that Facebook and Amazon followed in their respective markets. Trying to make profit is not their primary goal, it is to end up on top in the long run.
For now, 14 million operational profit is an excellent position for Spotify to be in with 300+ million users, since the competition is either under water or is fueled by their parent companies (Youtube / Amazon music / Apple music etc).
Sure. That’s what I thought about Amazon and Apple, too It’s a bit different if you have billions to invest and it becomes a game of statistics as you can stomach big losses in 19 out of 20 investments as long as 1 becomes a hit.
I love streaming services, but the business model isn’t working out for content providers (read: musicians).
This is of course very true but also a completely different discussion.
It’s a particularly big problem for types of music for which merch and concerts to generate income are not a viable option. Personally, I buy the vinyl (if available, else a CD/download) for every album that I truly cherish and want to make sure I have for the long run, even if streaming disappears. You see, I am hedging my bets, too
(I figure that if all fails, I can play the vinyl with a sewing needle stuck into a piece of paper )
On the other hand, before streaming it was just a tiny percentage of people who purchased music (outside of great hits) in any meaningful numbers, even if the percentage per sale was bigger for artists. And artists have been taken advantage of by labels since labels existed. Streaming revenues for artists must be fixed, but the potential is there.
In many ways streaming services are a victim of their own success - the ‘eat all you want buffet’ model is now what most consumers, especially youngsters expect for free or at the cheapest price point. This means artists get a pittance per play and rely on merchandising/tours to bring in the big bucks.
Those of us who pay for downloads or still buy physical media must be a drop in the ocean these days.
There seems to be a lot of speculation that has not been proved yet that the new Hifi non mqa tier is mqa sources from Tidal that have been unfolded and then down sampled to remove the mqa flags to CD quality. So if this was the.case your not avoiding mqa at all. I don’t believe this will be the case as that would be very shoddy business practice but who knows?
I’m perfectly happy with either MQA (Hi-res) from Tidal via Roon or high-res PCM from Qobuz. They both sound very good on my systems. It just so happens that there are too many gaps in the Qobuz music catalogue for me to consider a switch from Tidal.
I did a bit of searching and what I found in the Australian pricing of Tidal would indicate that customers with Hifi would likely be moved to Hifi Plus because the new pricing for Plus is identical to previous Hifi. So what Tidal has done is make a new Tier that is AU $6.00 cheaper for Hifi. If that was available to me, I would likely resubscribe at the lower rate. A few days ago I dumped Tidal to try a three month trial of Deezer Hifi, which I am using via Airplay or Chromecast. I have compared MQA with standard Hifi on Tidal and sometimes MQA sounds different and other times not. To say better is a matter of taste. I used Audirvana for that first unfold and compared using that app as UPnP into my Atom. Overall, Tidal directly in the Naim app sounds better to me than either MQA or FLAC via Audirvana. I have not yet compared TIdal with Deezer in my Atom. I still have two weeks of Tidal left.
It’s been that pricee since way before MQA came along. Think it might have been 17.99 at launch way back when. I had to use third party streaming platform called ickstream to get it into LMS back then no one had native integration at all.
I’m pretty sure that the UK price for Qobuz also used to be £19.99 when I first considered it as an option, but they reduced the price some time ago. Tidal hasn’t followed suit.
I think that we in the UK get a raw deal when it comes to streaming services. The pricing pattern norm appears to be that the cost of subscription is $19.99 in the States, 19.99 Euros in the EU and £19.99 in the UK. I guess there is some sort of uniformity about this price structure, but it is more than a little unfair on those in the EU and particularly on those from the UK.
The same sort of logic also appears to be used to price cars, which has just been reinforced by my pursuit of a new car!
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It’s a bit different if you have billions to invest and it becomes a game of statistics as you can stomach big losses in 19 out of 20 investments as long as 1 becomes a hit.
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