Tidal reportedly on the brink

[lAmBoY]

Just browsing the net and stumbled on this article: https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/13/tidal-jay-z-financial-trouble/
As a hifi subscriber I genuinely like the Tidal experience, although I wish the sw was better. I think it will only take for spotify to add better resolution and I will jump anyway, but I do use and like the MQA 'masters'.

Here are the hi-rez alternatives that I could find:

• HDTracks
• Naim Label
• Linn Records
• Onkyo Music
• Bowers & Wilkins Society of Sound
• PonoMusic
• 2L
• 7Digital
• Gimell
• HD Klassik
• Deezer Elite
• Technics Tracks

I fear the catalogues available on these services are somewhat smaller than Tidal/spotify/amazon/apple (will never use apple, they IMO do not care about audio quality and never have).

Which services do pinkfishers use mostly?

 

[najb]

Tidal has always been pretty awful. I didn't even bother hanging onto my free 3-months-with-a-Naim-purchase and deleted my account within a matter of hours.

The second bit of good news today!

 

[Barbapapa]

I use Qobuz. For me it seems to have a large catalogue. It focuses more on classical music, but has a good size popular music catalogue as well as far as I can judge. Outlandish songs you probably won't find (except if it's French), but when people recommended a song I've always been able to find it.

 

[Stunsworth]

Another Qobuz user here. I’ve tried Tidal, but as a Classical/Jazz lover preferred the Qobuz catalogue - and their metadata was better too.

 

[AndyU]

Qobuz is splendid. Hope it survives.

 

[TimF]

Tidal has always been pretty awful. I didn't even bother hanging onto my free 3-months-with-a-Naim-purchase and deleted my account within a matter of hours.

The second bit of good news today!

Regardless of which streaming service one uses or not, I do not understand why one would think any of the services available go out of business being a good thing? Having access to music should be a good thing I would think?

 

[TPK]

I have been very happy with HiFi Tidal at £20 a month especially the 24bit stuff. Although this is packaged as MQA my Aries mini is not so the higher bit must be improving things. I have also looked into Qobuz, however from what I can make out this would cost significantly more. I don't intended to download or rip so only want to steam. What are the alternatives at the same price as Tidal?

 

[Yomanze]

Tidal is my favourite... maybe this'll be what brings me back to ripping CDs onto my media server. It's all fair and well having the catalogue online, while it exists! FLAC is worthwhile through the main system, for portable, it's Spotify for me.

 

[TPK]

I can't imagine online catalogues not exsisting in the future.

 

[Yomanze]

I can't imagine online catalogues not exsisting in the future.

I think the threat is to having lossless streams. Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon etc. all going with compressed. For the everyday user, and for portable, this is fine, which is who they are targeting really.

 

[AndyU]

There’s talk of apple dumping downloads and going streaming only, though they’ve denied they will do this before 2019. Streaming offers the fantastic possibility of being able to listen to concerts live from anywhere in world - music like it used to be - think how good that would be!

 

[TPK]

I feel the everyday user will be looking for more, this is reflected in the healthy sale of portable DACs, I hope.

 

[linnfomaniac83]

Qobuz here, I found the Tidal UI terrible and dropped it quickly.

 

[hifi-dog]

so as a user of tidal via Roon, where does the demise of tidal leave me?

 

[Rodney gold]

more than 80% of my listening is Roon/Tidal .. the full monty service price in South Africa is R119 a month..GBP 6.50 (dropped to compete with Deezer
At that price is a no brainer...I would be real upset if Tidal went belly up .. unlike the cretins who say its good news if they fail

 

[Guest432]

so as a user of tidal via Roon, where does the demise of tidal leave me?

Pretty much stuffed, Roon have hung their hat on Tidal and I guess this becuase of their association with Meridian through sooloos and MQA.

They have pretty much refused to entertain other streaming services on their forum whenever the question gets raised.

 

[Rodney gold]

I think the impediment to other streaming services is more to do with integrating their UI with Roons

 

[Bob McC]

I tried the free trial a couple of years ago.

Gave up after a week.

Didn’t like the interface or lack of titles.

 

[TPK]

If Tidal only have 6 months of cash behind them I wonder how the other providers are doing. I seem to remember similar headlines regarding Google and Facebook a few years ago.

 

[davidsrsb]

Google killed off AltaVista. Spotify might kill Tidal