Considering the enormous amount of music available on any streaming services, let alone purchase sites such as bandcamp, I’ve always found it somewhat amusing/surprising the handwringing over gaps in catalogs. I wish I could find the time to listen to a n/th of what I have added to my library from Qobuz. One can’t have it all in life (and actually consume it too). If something’s truly missing (and it’s not happened much) I just buy it. To me that is the whole original raison behind ROON - to consolidate one’s streaming provider with one’s local rips.
6 Likes
I have Apple Music as part of apple one and I have Qobuz and tidal for Roon.
1 Like
So very true…I have forgotten more of what’s in my library than what I can remember tbh
2 Likes
It doesn’t matter what the “per stream” (which is meaningless) payout is. Spotify pays the most in terms of volume of dollars.
Qobuz, Apple and Amazon are the only streamers providing any sort of lossless playback, and neither Apple nor Amazon can deliver it on all platforms.
Getting either on roon would fix that, but 99% of streaming customers don’t care. Apple and Amazon don’t care about the 1%. Not worth their trouble. Music is a loss leader for other products for them.
Spotify found out that their 200,000,000 paying customers don’t even care about CD quality, much less lossless playback.
1 Like
This was my assumption too but as the video shows, clearly Apple actually feels differently. If may not bring them any meaningful uptick in subscribers but for whatever reason, they are considering it.
Amazon are also in.discussions with Roon (albeit in a less positive fashion).
Agreed, the overwhelming majority of all people do not care for lossless at all. Other features are way more important to them.
I’d estimate that the majority of Tidal’s content is provided lossless - certainly more than two-thirds of the 1600 or so albums in my Tidal library are straight up 16/44. Some of their content is in AAC, and I’m not going to lionize the MQA “discussion”.
1 Like
Accidently ran across this today. For the most part, doesn’t take into account Roon. FWIW.
Also, a face attached to GoldenSound. I recognized the hand movement.
2 Likes
I haven’t done rigorous statistical analysis, but it seems like about 90% of Tidal content served up to me by roon is mqa. I used to go try to find the cd versions, but I gave up after so many no hits.
It seems they have converted most of their catalog to MQA now and even if you play the CD resolution, you’re getting the MQA’ed version so that is actually worse than just a normal lossless. In short, with Tidal you can’t really avoid MQA and get normal lossless even if you want to.
2 Likes
I’m sorry but this is completely inaccurate.
Nope, I’m completely correct. See the above video starting here;
1 Like
Well, as someone who uses Tidal a lot, all the time, I’ll take my own personal experience over some random on Youtube. So far this year, 25% of albums added to my Tidal library are MQA across a wide range of genres from classical to metal. That is random and not deliberately searching for non-MQA versions because I don’t care whether it’s MQA or not.
There are, unfortunately, other places on these forums for the MQA “discussion”, so maybe you’ll get more traction there.
The “Big 3” music conglomerates (Universal, Sony, Warner) control about 80% of the music industry, and they all signed on with MQA. The other 20% are smaller, independent record labels. Each of the Big 3 own many, many record labels and converted most of their catalogs on Tidal to MQA. If you randomly pick an album on Tidal, there is a good chance it will be under one of the Big 3, and likely to be in MQA format.
1 Like
The reason I dropped Tidal and went with Qobuz. I and other people don’t like having MQA shoved down our throats.
8 Likes
Unfortunately, some MQA titles are showing up in Qobuz as well. 
1 Like
How though?
Some labels (e.g. 2L) will only provide albums in MQA format to the streaming services…
2 Likes
So what does Qobuz do with that?
It streams them in MQA.
EDIT:
Well, well… Upon checking, it appears that 2L currently ships regular FLAC to Qobuz.