I am not here to defend Neil Youngs ears.
He said:
I feel that my master files are in no way improved. They are degraded and manipulated. I made them. I know the difference. I can hear it.
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Qobuz has 200,000 subscribers worldwide (2019 figures). Tidal last said 3 million. I don’t know Amazon’s base but its streaming has issues and reportedly is getting worse (variable sample rate based on network traffic for one). None of the streaming services are profitable including Spotify. (Apple is its own thing) How would you grow distribution of high res media outside the audiophile niche?
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Aren’t Neil’s ears at least part of the equation?
If I’m not mistaken, Amazon was 55 million paid subscribers in January 2020 according to Counterpoint Research.
Education, with demonstration of the tangible benefits. If they’re nonexistent or impossible to demonstrate, keep it niche: why bother ?
I meant Amazon’s HD tier.
I’m not willing to live in the Ogg/AAC world that results from not bothering since I can readily hear the difference.
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Neil Young is in a privileged position as a musician. He has the economic power to block the degradation and manipulation (his words) of his music.
Most other musicians don’t have that possibility.
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If DVDs would be sold over decades with a free codecs and then one company would try to establish a new codec that force me to buy a new TV to get the full (but not remarkable better than before) quality and try to get a licence fee for all parts of the reproduction chain? Then I would feel the same about the video industry, yes.
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I prefer to live in a free world, where I have a choice.
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So if the rest does not have the same possibility, are we to say that MQA is not really an active “opt-in” process?
I hear what you are saying, I dont see a we.
Was that reply necessary?
I dont think there is an active opt in option for the artists.
I think the labels decide, as they own the rights.
Where did you get this information? I think you are spreading fake news or MQA marketing here as so often, which is largely the same thing.
You should read the end of chapter 11 of Neil and Phil’s book.
This version is probably much closer to the truth, because especially the passages of the book concerning Bob Stuart, Meridian and MQA were thoroughly checked by Neil’s lawyers, knowing that Bob Stuart would use all legal means to prevent publication of the real details.
For this reason, the book probably contains only a part of the whole background of the failure of the cooperation between PonoMusic and Meridian/Bob Stuart.
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I wonder if Dr. Axis is willing to make a test with MQA included 
(Read the comments).
Neil Young’s book is the published source. What is fake about it? I don’t know of any accounts coming from Meridian at all. Go back and read the book again if you doubt what I said. But as I said, I’m not aware of anything from Meridian that would present the other side of the story, which also has to be there. It’s to Meridian’s credit that I’ve never seen them engaging in the kind of muckracking that a lot of their detractors engage in, whether you like MQA or not.
“It might be an artistic decision by NY but he also has a well known negative history with MQA. He and Meridian were working together on his Pono player and NY wanted an exclusive on MQA for Pono. Meridian didn’t agree and the deal broke down.”
That is your statement to which I refer. I think you know that and are trying to deflect.
If you have no internal knowledge of the Meridian/MQA - PonoMusic negotiations, how do you come to this assertion?
I still don’t know what you are objecting to. Neil Young describes exactly what I said in his book. He also goes into much greater length about the Pono/Meridian relationship and funding, how far along Meridian was in developing MQA, what his belief about the exclusivity was, licensing fees and so on. I wonder if you’ve read the book?
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Where do you get the exclusivity clause from ? There’s quite a bit of harping about BS blowing hot air and not delivering, that’s for sure, and it’s strongly suggested (since there’d be “nothing unique” about Pono without it) but the only time the author uses the word “exclusivity” flat-out in the book, it’s in the excerpt that Computer Audiophile ran, and in the context of Reinet asking for a lot of equity, and not making the precious BS software exclusive to Pono.
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I have to search since I can’t immediately find my copy of the book. There was considerable online discussion too, a lot of it negative. I didn’t suggest that there was a written contract with an exclusivity clause, and I remember the gist that you’re saying, i.e. NY’s expectation that MQA was going to make Pono unique compared to other portables, and that exclusivity had been assumed in their repeated meetings with Meridian. In the end, Bob Stuart wouldn’t make it exclusive and further wanted licensing fees for MQA software, which is when it collapsed. But Meridian was probably at that point first working out their business strategy since both Pono and MQA were in development.
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No Chris. He asked MQA years ago to convert his own master recordings -supplied by him - so he could analyze and compare. They weren’t willing.
Why?
They don’t want anyone to have the ability to truly compare a master source to the MQA result. They want it in house and secret, so no true comparison and analysis can be done.
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