MQA is Vaporware

[asdf1000]

9 hours ago, mansr said:

Many buy legally when they can, but when hindered by geographical restrictions, release windows, and other nonsense, they will turn to piracy. That's all the music and film companies' own doing. If you refuse to sell, don't act surprised when people don't buy.

 

In the news today, with Spotify's launch in India:

 

https://www.recode.net/2019/2/28/18244964/spotify-warner-music-india-lawsuit-streaming-cardi-b-ed-sheeran

 

It covers geo restrictions, artists (not just particular albums) not being available and piracy.

 

It even covers how future contracts disputes between streaming services and labels could result in large chunks of your streamed collection (not just tracks and albums but artist collections) disappearing overnight while disputes are ongoing... yikes.
 

 

[asdf1000]

11 hours ago, mansr said:

There are also studies showing that regular pirates actually spend more than average on legal purchases. Many buy legally when they can, but when hindered by geographical restrictions, release windows, and other nonsense, they will turn to piracy. That's all the music and film companies' own doing. If you refuse to sell, don't act surprised when people don't buy.

 

Lots of action today. Here's an example where the artists don't want their music streamed but labels and most streaming services are going ahead anyway....

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/de-la-soul-catalog-streaming-services-tidal-801064/

[asdf1000]

8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The MQA solution has finally found its problem to address. Oh wait, just kidding. 

 

Ha good call.

 

I'm now way more scared of future contracts (new and renewed) battles than I am of MQA.

 

The labels and streaming services can digitally manage rights to access large chunks of music. This has always been the case in the background of course (in the T's and C's)... but these two notable headlining examples I've shared from this week bring it to the fore. Yikes.

 

That's another topic though.

 

 

[asdf1000]

@The Computer Audiophile an interesting chat here with Roon's Rob Darling...

 

Listen from 45mins... he says all the streaming services will have a high quality streaming tier and "it will end up being up being MQA..."

 

https://www.audiostream.com/content/rob-darling-roon-labs-audiostream-podcast-no6

 

 

[asdf1000]

9 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

It could happen. The labels own the content. If they want us to have MQA, we’ll have MQA. 

 

Sure we know that, but the way he says it with such certainty:  "it will end up being MQA..."... given his studios and record labels contacts (discussed earlier in the podcast)...

 

Then again, @Rt66indierock is still hatching a master plan to galvanise the youth on buying HiRes.

 

Will be interesting to see where this all is, 3 years from now.

 

Disclaimer: I would love MQA to go away..

[asdf1000]

5 minutes ago, Hugo9000 said:

Isn't Roon a spin-off from Meridian like MQA?  (Too lazy to look it up, sorry! haha!)

 

Not a spin-off but it doesn't matter. Here is Roon's COO commenting about MQA:

 

"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."

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/mqa-and-digital-rights-management/63220/3

[asdf1000]

4 minutes ago, Sonicularity said:

 

I don't think @crenca will allow Roon to get away with any bias toward MQA when both Tidal and Qobuz subscriptions are enabled.  Roon has already admitted to a problem that they are working on to resolve that favors MQA in some instances where there is no reason to consider that format to be superior in quality.

 

I shared a public quote by Roon's COO about MQA:

 

"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."

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/mqa-and-digital-rights-management/63220/3

[asdf1000]

1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

And there isn't a market for streaming CD quality either.  

 

Disclaimer: I would love MQA to go away.

 

I believe from reports (might not be accurate) there are ~ 3million Tidal subscribers and ~10 million Deezer subcribers.

 

Out of 13 million there, would it be outrageous to guess 5 million may be paying for CD quality streaming?

 

Not suggesting 5 million would move across to Spotify, but if Spotify could get 5 million of their 100 million subscribers to pay double for CD quality (or better), it wouldn't interest them financially?

 

Is that what you're saying?

 

Note: Spotify were testing CD quality streaming less than 24 months ago....

 

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/5/15168340/lossless-audio-music-compression-test-spotify-hi-fi-tidal

[asdf1000]

3 minutes ago, firedog said:

From reports, the actual number of subscribers paying for the CD quality streams is nowhere near that, and is a tiny percentage of overall subscribers. 

 

Cool. Would love to see these numbers. Does @Rt66indierock know?

 

Not guesses (like I've done) but actual figure of total Tidal + Deezer users paying for CD quality (of total ~13 million Tidal + Deezer users)

[asdf1000]

16 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Yes it would be outrageous to guess 5 million are paying for CD quality streaming. Deezer's revenue is near $400 million dollars for 2018 with 7 million paid subscribers. Those numbers would indicate there are very few people paying for CD quality.

I got a Universal Royalty statement of Tidal's for 2017. The CD quality tier subscriber number was less than 200,000. And you have overstated Tidal's subscriber numbers based on their last financial statements.

 

Spotify has done enough market testing to know their subscriber base will not pay more for CD or higher quality. 

 

What I'm saying is nobody cares. If I'm wrong Marc Finer of the DEG among others would throw subscriber in numbers in my face. They haven't.

 

 

All noted. You speak with the same certainty as Rob Darling in the podcast.

 

We shall see which of you is correct and which has it all wrong...

 

Disclaimer: I hope MQA goes away.

[asdf1000]

On 12/4/2018 at 9:22 AM, Rt66indierock said:

On January 6, 2017 I said when MQA reached 10,000 albums it would no longer be vaporware.

 

In a telephone call recently, Mike Jbara CEO of MQA Ltd told me around 1.1 million tracks had been processed. This is well over 10,000 since the rule of thumb is to divide tracks by ten or twelve to get the number of albums. Interestingly many have not made their way to the distribution channels.

 

I’m going to update the original post topics then it is time to move on to the next phase, MQA is not commercially viable.  

 

Have you changed your criteria for vaporware?

 

[asdf1000]

40 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

I'm still working on the encoder so it isn't done.

 

What do you mean by this? What work are you doing on the encoder?

 

[asdf1000]

3 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Mapping what happens when a file is processed by MQA.

 

Interesting.

 

Doing this yourself or with the help of Bob's worst nightmare ? @mansr  @Archimago  @Miska?

 

[asdf1000]

1 hour ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

have the tech people on this thread collaborate on an MQA dossier, and it will be linked far and wide...

 

Wasn't that done long ago? Posted to the front page of this forum? And linked far and wide already...

 

 

[asdf1000]

There's a funny inconsistency with MQA releases. I've noticed a few examples but here is one:

 

Santana released "In Search of Mona Lisa" EP in MQA on Tidal - 25th January 2019.

 

He later released a single "Los Invisibles" - 18th March 2019.

 

Both released this year, both released on the same label...

 

So why not stick with MQA with the latest release?

 

I wonder if it's to do with who produced his latest release... Rick Rubin.

 

The late Charlie Hansen wrote on Audio Asylum: "Above you wrote "I've never heard MQA processing make music sound worse." I have, and so has Rick Rubin, famous producer and (I think still) co-president of Sony Music. Michael Fremer attended the LA Audio Show with Rick and at the MQA demo, Rubin proclaimed the MQA version to sound either "synthetic" or "overly processed""

 

Maybe.

 

I don't know but I've noticed similar with a few artist releases, even when released on the same label. And MQA release is followed by a non-MQA release, on the same label.

 

If it's a different label, I'm not interested because that's a big variable. But it's interesting (to me anyway) if it's the same label.

 

If Brian Lucey wasn't banned he might be able to make a phone call or two to give us the scoop as I saw he's mentioned he knows Rick Rubin.

[asdf1000]

Is it possible it's MQA?

 

Even if not MQA, of the Big Four (Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon) Amazon might be the first to offer CD quality or better? If so, the rest to follow?

 

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/amazon-is-readying-a-hi-def-music-streaming-service/

[asdf1000]

20 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

However, from the article:

 

"It’s understood that Amazon has not partnered with MQA for its own HD tier."

 

Whoops, missed that line reading on my phone.

 

Positive move for the streaming world if this is true. Will be interesting to see what the Big Two (Spotify and Apple Music) do... their subscriber numbers continue to climb at a healthy rate with current sound quality options, so I'm not sure what rush they would be in.

 

Amazon and Google are probably looking for a big jolt in subscriber numbers though, to catch the Big Two.

[asdf1000]

27 minutes ago, firedog said:

Too bad the article didn't mention Qobuz. Not a good outcome for them - they don't even rate a mention.

 

Probably because they fall in 'others' along with numerous others. Tidal probably only gets a mention in the article because of the Jay-Z/Beyonce/popular artists connection but also falls in the same 'others' category.

 

There are some that believe we'll be left with just 4 in the end... Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon...

 

[asdf1000]

3 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Apple Music supposedly passed Spotify in # of subscribers a couple weeks ago.

 

In the US, not globally. Spotify is well ahead of everyone globally.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/29/18522297/spotify-100-million-users-apple-music-podcasting-free-users-advertising-voice-speakers

[asdf1000]

20 hours ago, firedog said:

I think the reports about Apple Music going hi-res, and NOT via MQA will be critical.

 

I haven't seen any reports about Apple Music going hi-res. Can you share a link?

 

[asdf1000]

3 hours ago, miguelito said:

My read of TIDAL finally adding MQA to the iOS app is that MQA Co failed to convince Apple to license the tech from them.

 

I don't read anything into the Tidal iOS app getting the 1st unfold (before iOS?) apart from bringing it into line with their desktop app... which has also been on macOS of course.

 

Apple is interesting because they could actually control the end to end experience of high sound quality, if they want to, from source file to headphones (the latter is getting a big push going forward..)

[asdf1000]

5 minutes ago, miguelito said:

The fact that it got such much later than the corresponding Android version is why I inferred this.

 

Noted but it's often noted by devs that iOS apps take longer for app store approval than Google Play Store...

 

Maybe Apple took some extra time approving to learn about what MQA is and maybe look at the increased power consumption needs (important for mobile devices) of the 1st unfold..

 

I doubt they'll be interested in licensing MQA but stranger things have happened.

 

[asdf1000]

On 4/27/2019 at 5:06 AM, Rt66indierock said:

the test marketing Spotify did showing nobody cared.

 

2 hours ago, miguelito said:

I don’t think Apple has any interest in audiophile sound quality. Just good enough sound quality.

 

Things change if Amazon is the 1st of The Big 4 (Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon) to offer something CD quality or better, as per rumours circulating this past week... 

 

If Amazon proceeds, I expect the others to follow...

 

[asdf1000]

5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

If high resolution is offered by anyone it won’t be due to consumer demand. Just like 8K TVs. 

 

 

 

Yup which is why I think after Amazon make the 1st move, Spotify, Apple and Google may also...

[asdf1000]

And for those that said Amazon is a small player at the moment (true for the moment), here is another key reason (in addition to the fact Amazon have deep pockets) that Spotify and Apple will be watching if Amazon do launch something CD quality or better...

 

So whatever market study/testing Spotify or Apple did in the past regarding lossless, may become irrelevant if Amazon make the 1st move, per recent reports...

 

The good news for some is Amazon aren't interested in MQA (according to the report circulating the past week).