Neil Young - Why his music isn't on Tidal

TIDAL MISLEADING LISTENERS
1-3-21
WHY I’M NOT ON TIDAL

TIDAL is calling their files of my songs Masters. But Tidal’s MQA files are not my masters. I make my masters - not TIDAL. I don’t need some hocus-pocus file manipulation that claims to improve my work. I made my masters the way I wanted them to sound. If TIDAL referred to their titles as TIDAL MASTERS, I would have no problem, but they don’t. They call them Masters. I had my music removed from that platform. They are not my masters.

Tidal’s master is a degradation of the original to make it fit in a box that collects royalties. That money ultimately is paid by listeners. I am not behind it. I am out of there. Gone. My masters are the original.

AMAZON HD and Qobuz are good alternatives to TIDAL where the real music - exactly as made by the artists and producers - is played. They play my masters. I don’t care if I am the last of a dying breed. I am proud to stand up for the work I did with my friends over the last 55 years. I don’t need or want Tidal’s so called improvements. I have heard them. They are degraded from my masters. They are manipulated and not our original work. I don’t buy the TIDAL hype.

MQA is the company supplying technology to TIDAL. In their own official descriptions they go into what they did to my original files. They altered them and charge a royalty. I feel that my master files are in no way improved. They are degraded and manipulated. I made them. I know the difference. I can hear it.

Neil Young

 

Good for him. Be nice if other artist followed but I reckon few care about the quality and many care about the money.

 

Neil Young was famously one of the very last artists to move to digital studio recording as he (still, presumably) hates it.

He was interviewed (must be around 25 years ago as I remember the interview well and I lived in Devon at the time, I am pretty sure) and said that as his recorded music, at that time, would appear very largely as CDs, he wanted to try to be in control of what it sounded like and the best he could do was to reduce the AD/DA steps involved.

He was talking about recording to DAT at the time.

 

Amen to that Neil, what a dude.

 

I wonder if selling off 50% of his rights will make any difference?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55557633

 

His Archive website is awesome

 

Another endorsement for MQA then.