Tidal running out of Cash?

[Musicophile]

http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/17/12/13/apple-music-rival-tidal-may-only-have-enough-cash-to-run-six-months

[agladstone]

I hope they can survive! 

I believe Tidal (particularly their Tidal Masters/ MQA) is excellent! 

One thing that constantly surprises me, not ONE person I’ve ever mentioned Tidal to has ever even heard of it before (“normal folks”, obviously not “us” audiophiles)! 

I keep hoping Apple announces its acquired Tidal and iTunes will now have Tidal technology as its backbone or something like this, but I doubt that will ever actually happen!! 

[Musicophile]

16 minutes ago, agladstone said:

I hope they can survive! 

I believe Tidal (particularly their Tidal Masters/ MQA) is excellent! 

One thing that constantly surprises me, not ONE person I’ve ever mentioned Tidal to has ever even heard of it before (“normal folks”, obviously not “us” audiophiles)! 

I keep hoping Apple announces its acquired Tidal and iTunes will now have Tidal technology as its backbone or something like this, but I doubt that will ever actually happen!! 

Why would Apple do that? They could simply switch Apple Music to lossless, but probably don’t see the demand for it. 

[agladstone]

21 minutes ago, Musicophile said:

Why would Apple do that? They could simply switch Apple Music to lossless, but probably don’t see the demand for it. 

Steve Jobs has plans to do it and he was working on it secretly with Neil Young, but he passed away prior to the project ever coming to fruition. Thus far, Apple as shown no signs or interest in moving toward Lossless or MQA / hi-res streaming. I was just stating it would be a “dream” / way for Tidal to be saved. Yet, not something I think would ever be a reality. 

One reason to acquire Tidal vs build their own would be that Tidal already has the Lossless and MQA streaming technology and systems in place, vs. them having to build their own. It also eliminates one competitor, however Tidal at this point is not taking too many users away from Apple or Spotify! 

[ecwl]

I’ve seen some on various forums who are anti-Tidal and would like to promote Spotify HiFi, Deezer HiFi Or Qobuz as their preferred option. The problem is that at least in Canada, as far as I know, Tidal is the only lossless music streaming option. And the reality is that lossless streaming market is very small at $20/month as most people (even some audiophiles) would opt for the free or $10/month lossy streaming services. I think this is a situation where more competition might eventually lead to no choice for consumers to get lossless streaming music eventually.

[Musicophile]

Should Tidal go out of business probably the key hope for markets like Canada be that Qobuz becomes more global. 

 

I’ve recently been contacted by a representative of Qobuz after I mentioned financial difficulties of the lossless streaming service claiming that since the recovery from bankruptcy some time ago the new investor has serious ambitions to bring them to profitability in the foreseeable future. 

 

Not sure how much ex EU growth this includes. Given the old fashioned geography based licensing deals of the labels I assume geographic expansion of a streming service is expensive. 

[Miko]

Jay Z is a POS, and I hope he loses his ass on this...

[TubeLover]

If Tidal goes under, 65% of my music listening goes with it. Not sure how I would survive that with no other real options for cd quality streaming music, especially with large enough libraries.

 

JC

[Musicophile]

4 hours ago, TubeLover said:

If Tidal goes under, 65% of my music listening goes with it. Not sure how I would survive that with no other real options for cd quality streaming music, especially with large enough libraries.

 

JC

Qobuz is apparently expanding their geographies. And Deezer also plans to do lossless.

[TubeLover]

Qubuz may be the only hope, as I just discovered that Deezer's  lossless/cd quality service, Elite, is only available to Sonus users. 

 

JC

[Acesn8s]

No. Deezer's lossless/cd quality service, now called HiFi, is available as a  "beta" desktop platform with a free thirty day trial right now. I signed up this morning and am playing it through an iMac into a TEAC UD-503 now.

[TubeLover]

I apparently confused Deezer Hi-Fi and Elite, based on this from their site:

 

Check out Deezer Elite

Listen to your favorite music in high definition and enjoy the best audio experience ever created for your home. Exclusively available via Deezer Elite on your Sonos system.

 

The other issue with Deezer is that there is no way for my Aurender (or most other network player/streaming devices) to play Deezer. I would be out of business as far as music streaming. 

 

JC

 

[One and a half]

On 12/14/2017 at 1:44 PM, Musicophile said:

Should Tidal go out of business probably the key hope for markets like Canada be that Qobuz becomes more global. 

 

I’ve recently been contacted by a representative of Qobuz after I mentioned financial difficulties of the lossless streaming service claiming that since the recovery from bankruptcy some time ago the new investor has serious ambitions to bring them to profitability in the foreseeable future. 

 

Not sure how much ex EU growth this includes. Given the old fashioned geography based licensing deals of the labels I assume geographic expansion of a streming service is expensive. 

Apart from paying miniscule royalties to the artists, the next major expense is in bandwidth and maintaining servers.

Oh wait, isn't there MQA to reduce the bandwidth, hang on, it's not lossless....

 

[Musicophile]

38 minutes ago, One and a half said:

Apart from paying miniscule royalties to the artists, the next major expense is in bandwidth and maintaining servers.

Oh wait, isn't there MQA to reduce the bandwidth, hang on, it's not lossless....

 

It’s true, the overall viability of streaming as a business model is still out there. 

[#Yoda#]

On 16.12.2017 at 10:11 PM, Musicophile said:

It’s true, the overall viability of streaming as a business model is still out there. 

 

It seems as if the major labels and others want to support the HiFi streaming services by raising the prices for HiRes downloads significantly. Many music lovers hesitate to invest > $ 20 and 50 - 100 % per album more than for the CD on Amazon just for a slightly better sound quality and may prefer a streaming service for $ 20/month.