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Tidal reportedly on the brink

Mr_Sukebe said:
One of the potential hopes for MQA was that they "might" use the best master available
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I thought that MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) was to supposedly remaster, to improve on the alleged 'aged and defunct digital processing systems of the past'. ( though all digital is equal)

Who is authenticating ?

Miles Davis died 26 years ago - who can say that Kind Of Blue should sound like, this - or that ?

Speaking to one of Meridians largest UK dealers he said he thought the process made every album sound as if it had been recorded in the same studio.

To me this is akin to having a pre amp with tone controls and thinking that my choice of tone is better than the original master.

MDA - Misterdog Audio, the most authentic audio, according to me, available soon.
 
Stunsworth said:
As mentioned above, Sublime+ is high resolution. The standard Sublime (which I have) is standard 16/44.1 with the exception of any albums you’ve bought in hi-res - they’ll stream in hi-res.

FLAC is just a file format and there’s nothing to prevent it being standard or hi-res.
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This is true regarding FLAC, but 16/44.1 *is* high resolution.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
One of the potential hopes for MQA was that they "might" use the best master available. (note the use of the word "hope", clearly not guaranteed).
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And I think that hope was pretty quickly shattered.

Just who do you think will ever try it again if MQA fails?
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The obvious candidate would be Apple...

And if someone does, I hope they do it honestly and openly, being clear about what they offer, instead of the smoke and mirrors of MQA confidentiality agreements and "time alignment" foo.
 
Yomanze said:
This is true regarding FLAC, but 16/44.1 *is* high resolution.
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The definition I've been using for "high res" is anything more than 16 bits or 48kHz - e.g. in terms of common numbers I'd include 24/44 and 24/88 but not 16/48. Correct me if I'm wrong (as if I have to ask!)
 
najb said:
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!
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I've got a three month freebie for Tidal but won't be subscribing as the classical offerings are poor, very poor in fact when compared to Spotify. Having said that I think this thread is vindication of my view that streaming is always a good second source but no substitute for CDs or downloads. Imagine having a Tidal or similar library that disappears overnight because the source company goes tits up?
Tangible assets trounce virtual ones every time.
 
Buntobox said:
I've got a three month freebie for Tidal but won't be subscribing as the classical offerings are poor, very poor in fact when compared to Spotify. Having said that I think this thread is vindication of my view that streaming is always a good second source but no substitute for CDs or downloads. Imagine having a Tidal or similar library that disappears overnight because the source company goes tits up?
Tangible assets trounce virtual ones every time.
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More or less the same can be said of many things in the new Internet age. Many, many companies rely on Cloud services to deliver their 'product' or 'service' but with a risk. Here is a true story - friend of mine is a senior sales person working for one of the big outsourcing IT giants. So they put IT service proposals to large multinational companies to run all of the back office operations. Said multinational requires a quarantee that the data is kept safe and is available 24/7. Biggest cloud storage provider is Amazon - they are huge in cloud services. Their terms of service make it explicit that the data and delivery are not guaranteed. A server, or network of, can be pulled at any time, for any reason. A huge disconnect from what their customers are looking for. So is all the music stored on Tidal, Quboz, Spotify really that safe? Probably, in practice but not in legal terms.


BTW - I have not seen on this thread anything that actually points to Tidal being in trouble. Is there any evidence? or this just postulation by 'someone'?
 
I currently use TIDAL as a second music source to my own library in Roon. Roon is the key for me as it integrates well with my Devialet amps (over their implementation of Air) and allows me to do DRC. I previously used Qobuz, but there seems to be little interest in integrating this into Roon.

I'm no great fan of TIDAL - there is a noticable and heavy bias towards urban "music", and the works of some bloke called Jay-Z in particular, which is of no interest to me. Qobuz had a more interesting library, however I can find most things I want (rock, prog, blues) so it would be a shame if it were to sink.

I'm not too worried; TODAL has wealthy backers & Qobuz is hardly in rude health itself. Spotify - I don't know their circumstances. To me, the big threat is Apple iTunes - if they push streaming, their brand strength and virtually bottomless pockets could overpower the other players. Hopefuly the world is a little more awake to the monopolistic practices of the big US tech firms.
 
JensenHealey said:
More or less the same can be said of many things in the new Internet age. Many, many companies rely on Cloud services to deliver their 'product' or 'service' but with a risk. Here is a true story - friend of mine is a senior sales person working for one of the big outsourcing IT giants. So they put IT service proposals to large multinational companies to run all of the back office operations. Said multinational requires a quarantee that the data is kept safe and is available 24/7. Biggest cloud storage provider is Amazon - they are huge in cloud services. Their terms of service make it explicit that the data and delivery are not guaranteed. A server, or network of, can be pulled at any time, for any reason. A huge disconnect from what their customers are looking for. So is all the music stored on Tidal, Quboz, Spotify really that safe? Probably, in practice but not in legal terms.


BTW - I have not seen on this thread anything that actually points to Tidal being in trouble. Is there any evidence? or this just postulation by 'someone'?
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I genuinely do not understand the modern-day obsession with the cloud. I really don't. I could understand the concept when drive space was expensive but now it's as cheap as chips. Even network capable hard drives are not that dear and they get round the cloud's "you can access your files from anywhere on the planet" propaganda. Ask yourself this question: would you take your hard drives with all your data on them, go into the street, hand them to the first random stranger you encountered and say "will you look after these for me please"? No of course you wouldn't but that is effectively what you're doing when you entrust your data to a cloud service provider. Your life's electronic footprint could be stored on a server anywhere in the world and you will not know where. Also, since the firm you've paid for your bit of the cloud may well be renting server space from someone else, you will probably not know by whom, either. You also cannot be 100% certain they are not mining your data for interesting titbits they can sell on for a profit. Exorbitant monthly access fees notwithstanding, they will not even guarantee your data's integrity or access to it. The firm you're paying, or the firm they're paying, could go under at any time without warning, at which point your data is history. I once backed up my wife's iPod to the Apple cloud, as was suggested by the iPod's OS. A few weeks later I had a need to restore from that backup only to discover to my horror that it had ceased to exist. Gone. Vanished without a trace and no possible recourse to Apple or anyone else for the complete data loss thus experienced. Never again will I use the cloud for anything under any circumstances. That iPod is now safely backed up to a local hard drive and that is backed up to another local hard drive RAID array on my QNAP server. The data is now my responsibility and I don't have to run a profit to guarantee its safety.
 
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AndyU said:
Apart from reports like this:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/tidal-in-trouble

and this:

https://9to5mac.com/2017/12/13/tidal-out-of-cash-may-close/
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Andy, you may have the bar set very low when it comes to journalism but I don't.

Both links are basically web site space fillers that regurgitate the original source material. Unfortunately that original material (the Norway web site article) is based on the square root of sweet FA.

So, if you want to post links and imagine they back up the original then you crack on. I (and I suspect many others) prefer a bit more substantive evidence.

The interweb has ensured that so-called journalists can fill their sites with click bait or made up stuff to get hits.

Any proper journalistic sources?
 
I have now seen those 'reports' but there seems to be little substance to them apart from a guess about how much money 'x' they have in the bank and how long it will last because they are making annual 'y' losses. They should understand that reported losses of 'y' do not correlate well with actual usage of cash. Losses will include all sorts of non-cash items like write-downs of goodwill, IP value, development costs etc. Intercompany transfers can hugely complicate the appearance of the master P & L in these days of globalisation. But the point is that the cash pile is likely to last longer than the annual losses would appear to allow.

My (ex) company reported losses as we grew for many years, but we still did not run out of cash - and nowadays is a highly profitable operation. Net companies go through a significant period of losses as they get to the full scale, and then suddenly can make mountains of money. Facebook was an example. Many others fail along the way - 'Yahoo' anyone?
So long as subscriber numbers grow well Tidal will have little problem raising more cash if it needed. We are told subscriber numbers are rising, so what is the problem?
 
HarryB - Feel free to post some substantive evidence from “proper journalistic sources”attesting to the financial strength and likely longevity of Tidal. afaicr JayZ tried to sue the guys he bought Tidal from for lying about the subscriber base, now he himself appears to do so. But maybe you have better information to share.
 
Andy, I have nothing to share. So I didn't. You also had nothing to share. But you did. Go figure.

I've been a journalist for 35 years (proper one) so if I see anything that seems remotely legit with sources and checked facts, I'll let you know.

Take care.
 
misterdog said:
Tidal may only have enough cash left to last six months.
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(my post 26)

Even the Op seems unsure, where is this Norwegian newspaper getting it's possible information ?

The same newspaper that was previously challenging Tidal's subscription numbers.

Maybe they have a grudge against JayZ or Tidal ?

Is Sean Connery still alive ?
 
Tidal is great at what it does and has introduced me to so much diffrent music and is also great for previewing new releases. I have had a subscription for almost 2 years now and would be a bit gutted if it went as the alternatives are pretty poor for my tastes. Anyway didn't Qubuz virtually go skint a year or so ago?
 
Natara said:
Tidal is great at what it does and has introduced me to so much diffrent music and is also great for previewing new releases. I have had a subscription for almost 2 years now and would be a bit gutted if it went as the alternatives are pretty poor for my tastes. Anyway didn't Qubuz virtually go skint a year or so ago?
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Yep, Qobuz nearly went down the pan a while back, but seem to be hanging on, thankfully. I wouldn’t put a lot of money on either Qobuz or Tidal lasting. I think Qobuz has a slightly better chance of surviving as they are are a bit more niche, european and are good at classical and jazz. Tidal are caught between Spotify and apple and Youtube; why pay for stuff when you can get it free. And not many people are falling for the MQA hype either.
 
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