Tidal - All Neil Young albums before 1982 are gone. Thanks TIDAL!

For those wanting it to open the link in Safari on iOS, make sure your phone is in landscape. They must have some bad media queries breaking the site in portrait mode.

Probably not in NYs case. Not saying his opinion is anything more than that, but he’s a sound quality obsessive and has always had a strong standpoint on digital matters.

I’m thinking follow the money. Not 100 percent certain, but removing his catalog hurts his fans.

You may be right but he’s always been a funny one. He’s already made odd streaming decisions around the Pono gadget. In truth I love him dearly, more so than Dylan, but not enough to buy a Pono…

His bad personal experience with Bob Stuart’s credibility on his PonoPlayer project back in 2013/14 probably also played a role. Fortunately we were spared Meridian/MQA because Charley Hansen stepped in with Ayre and in a short time developed one of the still best sounding DAPs that I still often enjoy today.

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There’s a storied history between Young and ā– ā– . I’ll trust Young’s integrity over ■■’s, but to each their own.

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Luckily for me, I have a dozen or so of his albums in my local NAS, so it won’t make too much of a difference to me personally.

I do like Neil’s music, and I’ve loved the couple of live performances I’ve been to, but I don’t listen to his albums a whole lot these days - although I might just rectify this today.

Neil’s Pono Player definitely wasn’t something I ever considered.

It’s a strange situation.

I’m sure he could simply have asked Tidal not to include any of his albums in MQA Master format. Tidal would very probably have agreed in order to retain his music on the platform.

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Thanks for the link; interesting article and I missed this book’s release. On my queue to read now!

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Agree about Young’s integrity, it’s unfortunate that his technical knowledge isn’t always as trustworthy. Missed the book myself and will get a copy for some context, thanks.

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You also get 404s on an android phone browser (not tried landscape). It’s really not a great site, pity…

You need to have the page open as ā€œdesktop siteā€. (3 dots on RHS)

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I’d rather have him read stuff on Monsanto and other interesting and important issues than have him waste his time acquiring a granular understanding of how and why Amazon’s volume control is messed up, butyaknow :wink: .

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The main point is that Neil Young disproved all the claims we heard the last years from the MQA propganda team.
Master: ā€˜Tidal’s MQA files are not my masters’, ā€˜Tidal falsely labeling my recordings as Masters’, ā€˜I am not behind it’, ā€˜My masters are the original’
Quality: ā€˜I feel my master files are in no way improved. They are degraded an manipulated.’
Authentication: ā€˜I am not behind it. I am out of there. Gone.’

How did the authentication process with Mr. Young has been run?
Now everybody should see the naked emperor called MQA!

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Agree again, but he could say a little less about hi-res music concepts he’s not quite grasped as well, giving him even more time. Been mischievous is all, I hold him in very high regard, just not really showing it. :wink:

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They’re only going to do that by expanding into other markets!

I think when this book came out he did a full length episode of the Vergecast podcast.
He was a crotchety interviewee but it was a fascinating podcast for anyone interested in listening to it.
It was worth a second listen to me (which is rare)

Regards

Mike

But the main point here is: how can TIDAL say that MQA is music authenticated ā€œas the artist intendedā€ when NY clearly counters that statement? It’s either of the following:

  • TIDAL’s whole MQA premise is fake, something that is now demonstrated by NY;

  • NY is lying and just left because of a bigger bag of money elsewhere.

Take your pick.

Nope, Neil young has an opinion, that’s his right and it all sounds political to me. That doesn’t mean anything beyond that.
He could leave his music on Tidal in CD quality, he was always happy to in the past.

He must have had input and authorised the initial MQA encoding to even allow it. Something has changed and it isn’t the music quality no matter what he says.

There will be a lively (and illegal) trade in his MQA recordings if anyone has copies… I won’t be bidding though, there is too much great music out there in the wild to bother, especially MQA.

Plenty of other artists, producers and listeners are loving what MQA delivers.

This is why you need to be both a Tidal and Qobuz subscriber - for $15 extra per month it is well worth not getting upset about these sorts of things.

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