Sometimes the money leads to a dead end. We pay MQA to let you “Core Decode” in Roon. We don’t make money directly on MQA, we lose it! However, we do gain customer satisfaction for those who wanted MQA, which is in itself a form of being paid.
It’s crazy how hard we try to stay “Switzerland” when it comes to audio religion, but it’s near impossible sometimes. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
I love the business dynamics of how the “masters” tier is free for TIDAL HiFi users. It’s brilliant. TIDAL gets to provide something other than CD quality for the same price (to the subscriber) and the subscriber can’t really complain about free, eh? Our vocal niche here is tiny. TIDAL is gigantic compared to Roon and the audiophile community. There are probably more people on TIDAL that wanted Beyonce’s Lemonade than there are people who know what a DAC is.
I wonder why TIDAL cares. Who were they competing with?