Tidal HiFi now $9.99

Tidal has to embed cost of MQA license into the final price. This is the expense other providers do not have.

 

If I sign Tidal Hifi and not Hifi plus, I get 44.1/16 instead of MQA, right?
Even then, I get a lot of albums marked as "M".
In this case, if the album is marked as "M", do I stream it at 44.1/16 too?

 

I wonder why, once bandwidth no longer was an issue, that Tidal didn’t ditch the financial burden of MQA? If MQA means Tidal can only afford to offer high res at twice the price (or more) than their competitors, what’s the point?

 

I believe they were aiming for product differentiation and also a reason to ask for higher prices. Every other streaming provider has essentially the same feature set.

 

Apple and Amazon are "unfair" competitors in the music streaming services. Amazon has always been supremely focused on customer acquisition, over profitability. Get as many customers into the Amazon ecosystem even at a loss, as Prime members or whatever, where they will eventually become regular customers buying diapers, paper towels, groceries, everything through Amazon companies.

Apple has been treating its music streaming service as a loss leader into the Apple ecosystem, to turn customers into being an Apple user, and eventually pick the iPhone and Mac as their comfort zone. It's also why Apple still sells products like the iTouch very inexpensively - it's like an iPhone, minus the telephone, but a whopping 80% cheaper than an iPhone. Parents buy them for little kids too young to have a smartphone, who then become used to the iOS system when they move up to buying a smartphone or tablet. Tim Cook has even said of Apple Music, "We're not in it for the money."

These two companies are willing to take loss leaders on music streaming, because they have much more to gain pulling in long-term customers who buy iPhones, iPads and Macbooks, or all the stuff you used to buy at your local Wal-mart, drugstore or grocery store. Meanwhile, your Spotify and Tidals cannot always compete on pricing. Instead their product is their core business, and they have to differentiate themselves with things that make their service more attractive, like exclusive podcast programs, or better audiophile quality features.

As a consumer, I love paying less. But I am also mindful of the days when big box stores took loss leaders on physical music product (like CDs), killing the mom and pop record stores who couldn't compete on price and didn't win on offering better quality service. Then the online retailer giants like Amazon took loss leaders on physical music product, killing off the brick and mortar big box stores. All of us customers bought from whoever had the lowest prices. After all that bloodbath, everyone now buys from Amazon, and you don't see any physical music product on sale anymore these days.

 

And many or most smart buyers went to ebay and Discogs for their music software purchases you mean?

 

They likely signed a contract that locks them into a MQA agreement for a number of years. One day it may go c-plunk!

 

Sadly, word on the street is that TIDAL HiFi just takes the HiFi+ MQA content, chops off the bottom 8 bits (24 --> 16 bits), and resamples if necessary to 44.1kHz if it's originally 48kHz content.

Those that began as 24/44.1 MQA will be played back as 16/44.1 and typically will still be seen as an MQA file which is of course silly because clearly the content has been tampered with yet the decoder can't tell that it's not "authentic".

48kHz MQA files will be resampled to 44.1kHz and will lose the MQA control stream (no longer bit-perfect) so the software/hardware decoder will not be triggered. So you're basically playing downsampled undecoded MQA DSP-modded data.

I don't know if TIDAL has some kind of contractual agreement with MQA for some length of time. Would be nice if they started fresh and just streamed unmolested lossless 16/44.1 straight from the music label. As it stands, this is a mess.

 

My Tidal subscription runs out in a week. I'll probably go month to month now unless Best Buy offers the $89 deal for a years subscription like last year. Have to check out Qobuz and see how that is. Would love to be able to copy and transfer my collection from Tidal to Qobuz. Is that even possible? If it is it'd save a lot of time.

 

Yes there are programs out there that allow you to transfer your collection to other streaming services just be aware there may be a few missing titles between services for some reason or another and that while there may be like titles maybe some don’t match up due to one service having just the standard version and the other service having the deluxe version instead etc. If you do trial Qobuz just so you know they are supposedly changing their artist pages layout (the look of it) to sort out discographies sometime in January which will help with finding particular albums/singles instead of the jumblized layout they currently have had that most people don’t like.

 

Thanks! Where would one find the programs to transfer my collection on Tidal to Qobuz?

 

You can do a general search on the web like this: transfer playlists between music streaming services - Yahoo Search Results
and look at the results to decide which one you want to use.

 

Try Soundiiz.

 

Thank you both!

 

So I found some albums/songs on Tidal which have both MQA and CD quality files (on HiFi tier). I was expecting them to sound very similar but after a few songs, I feel like there is a clear difference. The MQA titles are brighter, thinner with a percieved lack lower bass, which may make the sound less muddy. Images were a little flatter too. My initial thought was it was similar to what I hear if i phase inverted my system. I suppose many non audiophile listeners might be attracted to the percieved clarity. I don't know if Tidal did this intentionally but based on this, I will likely not continue beyond the trial period and stick with Deezer although they have not adjusted their prices for my country yet.

 

I will just leave this here:
Tidal 'HiFi' is NOT lossless - GoldenSound

 

It's not good business sense to cut the current price of any service in half.
They have a pretty deep catalog, I'm happy.

 

You need a good MQA DAC before you'll hear a true and unmistakable improvement. ime.

 

Tidal HiFi tier is not supposed to require MQA hardware. It's supposed to be equivalent to FLAC CD quality.

 

I'll be giving Qobuz a try. Been getting emails from Qobuz one announcing Neil Young's new album Barn. That made the decision easy as Tidal is missing most of Neil Young's catalog. I'd also prefer to deal with a streaming service that's up front about the sound quality of their music. Not one claiming the audio quality is hi-res when it is not.

 

I had Tidal MQA for almost 2 years playing through a Bluesound Nodi 2i, and I was happy. Then I tried Qobuz through the same streamer, and promptly dropped Tidal. Same equipment, cables, etc......Qobuz sounded better, hands down, to both myself and my wife.

 

I had missed this, thanks for posting. It's as suspected then: on the HiFi tier you're getting the already butchered MQA on 'Masters' tracks and then only getting a partial unfold.

Like Bill Mac above, I think I will be trying Qobuz soon.

 

MQA requires three levels of unfolding, do it right and the improvement is jaw dropping. Unfortunately most will never experience it.

 

Tim 2 Are You payed by Tidal? If so You should make it a little less obvious.

Read the link i posted. Its about Tidal not providing true lossless files. Only truncated MQA versions that are clearly inferior to lossless. Yet still marketing it as true lossless.

That's not a matter of taste, that's false marketing and falls under a class action lawsuit.

 

I have full MQA capability in both my systems but I also believe if the Tidal charges were truly commensurate with their supposed high resolution offerings they should be charging about $0.99 a month.