Goldensound’s view on MQA

The full original quote of what CG had written, if you had not left out half of his first sentence, was

You are right. Qobuz was £19.99 and the Qobuz Studio (which was the hi-res option) was £24.99. They reduced it immediately when Amazon came into the market. Because of this saving I thought about subscribing to Tidal as well but MQA and continuing high price stopped me.

I don’t know of any DAC with an infinite conversion rate, to the best of my knowledge all DACs in use have minimal interval between successive conversions.

Unless you know otherwise?

Venture capitalists and private equity companies typically think 2 to 5 years.

It’s likely given the nature of the business that Alpha Private Equity are thinking toward the upper end of that in their acquisition of a majority shareholding in Vervent; there is still a small possibility that they could be a looking for a repayment on investment of a little beyond that, but 10 years or more would be very unusual (but still possible).

And yet somehow we have Amazon, Apple, Twitter, Reddit, and a load of others. Look, anyone can bet on streaming to disappear, to each their own, though I wonder what other music distribution method they see in this future.
(Edit: and VCs are not the only source of money out there)

I have no clue what the owners of Focal-Naim would have to do with this

I made no comment about streaming services.

Making the hardware that we use to render the data streams perhaps?

Who don’t seem to be funded by venture capital companies or private equity companies… These organisations are bigger than the venture capital companies or private equity companies and as previously pointed out they are not valued by tangible assets but by the advertising to their user base and the possibility of becoming ‘last man standing’!

As you said, large investors think in decades (as opposed to smaller operations like venture capital companies or private equity companies who think shorter term).

Whales don’t rely on minnows to keep them afloat (although eating the minnows is a different thing altogether)!

The whole discussion in which I had made that comment was about the survival of streaming services in the absence of current profits.

Yes they do, but these fine machines are not a deciding factor for the survival of streaming services which was the context. Anyways, I believe Naim is profitable.

And so the average time horizon of VCs is not what decides the survival of streaming services.

Sorry, I think you are having a totally different discussion than what I had at the time of the post you quoted.

Streaming won’t disappear… It can’t. There are too many youngsters (under the age of 30) using it and it’s buried into their psyche; they’ve never known a world without music-on-demand. Take away the means for them to stream music where ever they are and they’ll flounder around, lost and bemused with glazed looks on their faces :wink:

I see the market placed undergoing consolidation into two, basic, sectors: Cheap mp3 (or similar) quality for the masses on their phones: Then a much more expensive ‘quality’ option for those using an external DAC or HiFi streamer. I would not be surprised at a c. £20 price for the ‘cheap’ package and £40 for the quality package.

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I expect the same regarding the mass market.

I addition there is an audience, small as it may be, for high quality at a higher price people are willing to pay. Once a streaming service has the infrastructure in place and is overall close to or beyond break-through (and I expect that the bulk of the cost is servers and the contracts with content owners for streaming rights, which is largely finished at some point), I believe that adding higher-quality files is not such an issue that nobody would find a profitable business case. In the same way as you can buy high-end versions of practically everything that is also available in inferior or cheaper versions, from toilet paper to cars to sail boats.

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At the time of the post you made, the later discussion about the survival of the streaming service was only just starting, and the post you made didn’t make it clear that it applied solely to that part of the thread; and not to the earlier part of the thread dealing with the possibility of Naim implementing MQA.

If you wish to ensure that you are not misinterpreted when making a general statement that applies to only one part of a thread, then perhaps limiting that general statement to the relevant part of the thread or otherwise noting that this is what you intend, might be a good idea, rather than leaving it apparently applying generally (and hence can be reasonably assumed to be general and applying to the whole thread!).

Being dyslexic it is hard for me to work out unstated intentions or limitations.

I had replied to a post of another user that had been specifically about streaming. This post was apparently later deleted, so it is understandable that you might not have realized this context.
(Several posts before that were about streaming profitability and survival though, and the whole thread in fact is about streaming. )

Whatever, I do not wish to have a silly fight with you over this. It was just a misunderstanding between us, it happens, all good :heart: I have no interest in a discussion about the ownership of Focal-Naim, though, right now and right here. (In fact I had already bowed out of the streaming discussion much earlier as well)

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Ah, understood, just mutual misunderstanding.
:slightly_smiling_face:

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It doesn’t need to be profit. Growth is also fine. It’s about the company value, a loss-making company growing fast will often be more valuable than a company making a steady profit. (Weird eh)

And it also doesn’t mean they will get out after that period if they think it has further potential, it’s just the horizon they look at when investing. It would be foolish to actually step out and invest in something they have less faith in just because their original “horizon” came up.

Yes, agreed, I said similar things earlier in the thread. If there is a promise of big future profits, and growth fuels this, (some) large investors tend to be willing to live with extended periods of losses.
As litemotive rightly mentioned when this discussion was “hot”, it’s quite typical in these internet markets that it is clear from the outset that there will only be one survivor in the end (at least in the mainstream) who will get to bag the big profits. Until then, the objective is growth, in order to end up as this survivor (and ideally without bleeding too much until then)

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My bad. I didn’t realize that I was viewing a partial, collapsed version of CG’s post.

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Ah, I see! Apologies for being somewhat harsh

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No worries. Now I know to pay more attention to the expand/collapse button!

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As far as I know, the minnow is a fresh water fish, so no idea why a whale would be eating it.

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I’d like a middle ground between download to own and all I can eat streaming.
If I look at Roon it gives me a set of data which is not unlike the sort of data companies farm from users at the other end of the experience.
This gives me a good idea what I’ve been listening to, what I end up enjoying more and where I may want to go in the future. The concept that the service can be an assistant and guide me based on my tastes appeals to me and helps to ensure variety and enjoyment in equal measure.
With that information in mind, I’d prefer to pay less month on month, have the ability to listen to the same thing a limited number of times, 10 full uninterrupted plays of a track for example, after which I’m given the option to add it to my own personal digital locker for a fixed fee, whilst I maintain a subscription this can be stored in the cloud and streamed as I want it, without limit. I can if I wish also choose to download it and have it available locally should I choose to.
This can be purchased in a variety of formats from compressed for casual listening to the more exotic versions and even perhaps with physical formats or super fan limited runs of vinyl or CD made available to me.
Those are extras, I can take those options or just pay a fixed amount to have a digital locker version, one I can take with me if I quit the service down the line and without penalty.
This could incorporate various promotions and offers as well including albums of the Week or Month with more freedom to evaluate and with time limited offers for special versions or download/digital locker pricing.
The current high cost all you can eat model to my mind doesn’t equate to linear value over a longer period of membership. I may have access to millions of tracks, and a percentage of them in a somewhat better quality, but the percentage of that buffet I get to sink my teeth into is likely quite small.

True, and as I’m a marine biologist you’d expect me to know that; however, Euphausia superba doesn’t have the same metaphorical connotations!
:wink: :joy:

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