very true! 
We can criticise the promotional image and then think Tidal is in trouble with low market share. If Tidal wish to increase market share they need to promote to the youth market. You can’t have it both ways.
As soon as you get into Tidal via Roon you will discover that the coverage of content is very wide and deep.
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Chris, I am a long term subscriber to Tidal and aware of its content. In most respects it’s far better in terms of breadth than Qobuz.
Really, all I’m trying to say is that there seems to be a dichotomy in terms of the 2 sides of Tidal, ie the sound quality audiophile side and the image and marketing to the rap and r&b culture. I’m not sure they are happy bedfellows particularly. I certainly really appreciate more the feel of Qobuz. I instantly feel its catering more to my demographic, ie middle aged, reasonably affluent with audiophile tendancies and keen to be offered by default within the app itself, more complex and diverse music.
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I’m using Tidal (6 month free gift) just for comfortable prelistening albums I’m interested in. If I like them I buy them (from Tidal store, Qobuz, Bandcamp or ITunes). If they are okay I just add them to my library, as it doesn’t hurt so much, if the music is removed from Tidal. I don’t trust any streaming service as they can’t guarantee that they don’t alter my playlists. That’s the biggest problem of streaming services. Lots of artists are missing and stuff gets removed due to licensing issues or artists actively remove their albums from a service as happened with Tidal some days ago or on other services in the last years.
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I own around 2500 CD/DVD/BR, all saved on a NAS now. I only use the physical media for SACD and when I want to listen a 5.1 format. For new music, I usually use Tidal.
I’m a Roon customer for Roon - I love the interface, I love how interactive these forums are with the brains behind Roon, I love how much new, valuable stuff seems to show up regularly. I’m completely satisfied having paid for a lifetime membership just for what Roon is offering me.
I love the Tidal integration as well. It would bum me out if it went away, but not sour me on my subscription to Roon. I agree that I don’t really know anyone who cares about SQ (until they hear it on a nice system, but that’s another topic), but I have at least some hope that, all things being equal, people would opt for the better SQ, and either that will help Tidal survive, or help bring some of the other services up to higher bit rates. All of the Master recordings is another really really nice part of Tidal that I have less confidence another service would pay for.
Finally, Roon’s continued march into seamless integration with other manufacturers source and speaker platforms is another big advantage, at least to me. To be able to play music on my system, and then on other speakers around the house, all with one library and one interface, controllable by basically any device that is close to me, is awesome. I realize that people with Sonos have been able to populate their house with Sonos devices that do the same thing, so it won’t win those customers over, but it seems like there is still a big market of people who want music in many rooms.
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ÇI’ve been a Tidal subscriber since the first month, although I’ve changed the subscription country three times. I’ve never liked the musical focus of its apps, but that’s easy to get around. They change in every country. These days I use it mainly through Roon, anyway. But I do appreciate its breadth of selection. And MQA is a great addition for those who are interested in it. I’d be extremely disappointed if Tidal disappeared, although I suspect there exists a reasonable probability that it could.
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I think that was a comment I made ask in 2015.
I expect they’d still be licensing it from one of the big players at considerable cost and it still wouldn’t necessarily solve the issue of the depth of access to metadata that Roon needs to support its model.
Virtually everyone starts at 7Digital as far as I know. Like most things nowadays there are a number of brands but in terms of infrastructure only one or two players.
It depends on the content you are looking for. Qobuz is streets ahead of Tidal for Classical music. The other problem with Tidal - that even if the classical album is there, in numerous cases, the tracks are out of order - which for most classical albums - makes them unplayable.
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Has anyone noticed that the new Tidal app pretty much hides MQA files (at least I can no longer find a separate “Masters” listing)? They do still show the “M” logo on files that are MQA encoded.
So what happens when Roon comes up with a plan B? You all going to leave Tidal asap and go for plan B? It just sounds like people want Tidal to be in trouble because they would like to see integration with their own favourite streaming service.
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Tidal is my favorite streaming service. Or at least my only one and no I wouldn’t convert to a lossy compression streaming service, at least not without a more aggressive CD purchase program to quickly replace lossy albums with redbook minimum, and thus it would represent a lot less value than Tidal.
I don’t want Tidal to be in trouble. I also don’t want Roon to be in trouble because it’s not integrated with any streaming service. It would still be a great piece of software, but in IMHO at about 66% of the value that it represented before. That would be a substantial drop.
I guess I’m not really sure what point you are making other than to stir the pot, which is fine (I’m a pot stirrer too). There’s nothing wrong with (1) being concerned that the golden age of Roon might be crippled by loss of integration with a full-library lossless streaming service or (2) encouraging Roon to seek alternatives to mitigate that potential loss.
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There are other lossless streaming services! I have to subscribe two for now as Tidal is not my favorite but the only one that works with Roon. I would not be sad to see Tidal disappear when Roon would could decide on integrating other services using SDKs that come with those services, same as other players do.
They think it’s all over… It is now…
Tidal is now the official streaming partner of Arsenal. Whatever that means.
So. I live in Norway, and some guys over at some university here claim that Tidal has been cheating with play counting… I guess you have seen the headlines. Artists are suing and everyone says that Tidal are finished.
Should we computer audiophiles be trembling?
I ask the question here as I hope to get som real answers from you at Roon, who in a brilliant way have made Tidal part of your platform, which I really appreciate.
Are Tidal going down, or are the media (maybe even more here in small Norway) hyping this?
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whether the answer is yes or no, there’s nothing we can do…
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