Is Tidal in trouble?

The great thing is, it’s all optional and we can choose… enjoy the Wav…

Lol. For sure, although it would be wonderful to eventually understand ‘why’ ? (!)

pj
P.S. Far from enjoying WAV (although I do when the option exists) I’m thoroughly enjoying 128 kb/s streams of unidentified compression schemes -MP-3/AAC.

I’m reading that Qobuz will be launching in the U.S. soon.

I also read how all the streaming services are losing money, that with Spotify’s IPO, they are hoping to become profitable within a year. I suspect that Tidal is not profitable as well. Anyone know if Qobuz is making a profit?

It seems like the industry decided that around $10/month is the price for streaming MP3 and around $20/month is the price for higher res streaming. Seems that after paying expenses, those price points don’t allow for any profit. I used to work at a hospital where the CFO would tell us “no margin, no mission”…

Do not lose hope. There is a cure for the streaming disease: a short visit to any media flea market. Just saying… :grinning:

3 Likes

Because most of us do not have the ears, the hardware or dare I say the will to discern differences to the extent you can. If they cater for the majority who look for something equivalent to a ripped CD on their systems then they have done as much as they can. And unfortunately while impressing you might bring them kudos, you don’t represent the difference between success or failure or indeed profit or loss.
Taking that last point a step further, it is even possible that making the necessary changes to achieve what you say is possible might eat into their margins more reducing further the chance of profitability.
So is Tidal troubled by your results? I would argue they are not.

I’ve moderated parts of some posts that were outside the guidelines and deleted another that was about moderation rather than the topic. The best way to draw attention to posts that infringe is to flag them using the icons under the posts. Posts about moderation drag the discussion off-topic and are better made in the Roon Labs LLC/Roon Community Site. If you have concerns about moderation have a read of this thread.

1 Like

Henry: your reply confuses me. When you state:

" … If they cater for the majority who look for something equivalent to a ripped CD on their systems then they have done as much as they can."

Umm, you do understand that I feel MPD’s (Music Player Daemon)128 Kb/s 'streams" has demonstrated it can sound as good (in fact clearly better) than CD’s 1,411 Kb/s SQ is my point; therefore, Tidal’s “Hi-Rez”/CD equivalent content is pointless.

Continuing, you say: " …And unfortunately while impressing you might bring them kudos, you don’t represent the difference between success or failure or indeed profit or loss."

Umm, kudos to Tidal or not, or whether they’re out to impress me I could care less -but they best be impressing somebody. For, as compression algorithms become even more commonplace and comparable to the ‘real deal’, offerings such as Tidal Hi-Rez, MQA or even Hi-Rez downloads becomes more and more questionable.

pj

What was the survival rate?

3 Likes

The problem is no one in our community pays more for lossy over lossless. Get it? The people who stream and care about quality will go to who offers them their best version of high definition streaming, be it CD quality with MQA or Qobuz’s 24 bit offerings. If they offer a tier that is lossy they need to reduce prices no matter how nice you think it sounds because you can’t charge the same or more for less!

I came across this today from AV Club

1 Like

recently emerged from the hellish bramble of Apple Music’s user interface, but Tidal’s seems like the best out there

Interesting view. I wonder if they’ve seen Roon.

Sorry to say this, but if that is your point of view and proven by your ears (in your own experiments, without anyone else being there and documenting that this occurred) then your setup is flawed. It’s that simple.

Any argument coming from you after this one is build upon the same flawed foundation. This is like listening in on some skewed political debate. Or it’s just someone trolling the so called “audiophile community”. :face_with_monocle:

This is so far away from the original topic that if you @peter_jasz have the least respect for this forum then start your own thread.

4 Likes

No, you think you can under unscientific conditions…

Streaming and FLAC dsecompression are one of the least processor intensive tasks you could possibly think of. By the way, how much more powerful do you think your average PC processor is today compared to the IC in a 1990s CD player converting WAV to I2S in real time, for instance?

Actually we know exactly what they’re serving up. It’s trivially easy to do a waveform analysis against a known source to check which master is in use, for example.

2 Likes

Recently I’ve noticed a number of improvements with Tidal and perhaps we are now seeing the benefits from the Sprint cash infusion.

I hadn’t used the Tidal app on my iPhone in a while and this weekend I noticed the “Home” page is tailored to my tastes showing me new tracks and albums from genres of music in my library rather than what it used to be (primarily hip-hop/rap). I’m seeing more customized playlists also with lots of exclusives. There is a larger variety of programs (videos, shows, podcasts, etc.) which I don’t personally follow but I could see how they would cater to a broader market. The app redesign was long overdue and now I see it performs better than ever. I also appreciate the MQA offering. Finally, I very much appreciate they offer a discount for military members (it’s the only streaming service that does that).

In short, Tidal is improving and any company that commits resources to continuous improvement of its product is doing the most important function right. They could still fail if they don’t get financials and operations right though… I hope that doesn’t happen.

3 Likes

Yup I’ve noticed this too. Hopefully Roon is able to piggyback off this Tidal data/feature in future.

Tidal’s track credits info can be pretty good too… I hope Roon can piggyback off this Tidal data too…

1 Like

Ah, yes, how could I forget to point out how much better Tidal is than all other streaming services I’ve tried with music credits, album information, track information, and reviews!

1 Like

That’s interesting. I worked in the telecoms sector for a long time and one of the problems the industry threw a great deal of time and money at was improving the visibility of relevant content on the smaller real-estate of a smart phone. I wonder if it is the spillover of that investment you are seeing.

Better than Roon too, in my above example of a classic album…

That was a teaching hospital, run by a doctor, once the new CEO started, someone with healthcare business experience, they started on a path of consistently being profitable, eventually buying three other hospitals, a bunch of clinics and practices, etc.

The Tidal app has definitely gotten better with regards to not bombarding you (i.e. me) with only hip-hop / rap oriented albums, songs and artists. They seem to be mimicking Netflix’s approach, which I’ll say is unquestionably ‘better’, but I would like some ability to customize what is displayed on the main page. For example, I’d like to remove the ‘video’ and ‘podcasts’ categories (and probably a couple others) from the main page. Regardless, glad to see Tidal improving their Tidal-app experience.

1 Like