MQA and Digital Rights Management

[danny (Danny Dulai)]

I came to think of the tactics of drug dealers. They have a “product” that everyone knows is bad for You, but to get “users” they offer their drugs for free, initially, later there’s a premium.
Same tactics used by MQA
By the way once You’re into drugs it’s hard to get out, much like a proprietary format

While I’d agree with you here, you aren’t buying the MQA content, so there is no ‘stuck’.

If you bought & downloaded MQA tracks, you could possibly make the argument you have. Then you’d be stuck paying for MQA capable DACs for all future purchases, to get the value out of that premium you paid for the “hi-res” data locked into the MQA format.

However, it’s my understanding that most are just renting the MQA content from TIDAL, this won’t be the case.

However, if MQA dominates the world of hi-res, then the fear is spot-on. A world in which all content higher resolution than 44.1/16 is encoded in MQA is bad for the future of audio. No company should have power like that.