How To Cope If Tidal Does Go Under?

[speavler]

yeah, this streaming thing prolly just a fad.

[Blake]

18 minutes ago, wushuliu said:

 

There you go. And this applies to movies as well. Soooo many people hypnotized by convenience technology, they don't stop to think about the finite nature of rights, licensing, and yes, service. I am slowly stockpiling CDs because they cost only a few bucks now. Soon they will go through a resurgence, especially as titles go out of print or licensed to a specific service. We all know how this story goes, but we whistle past the graveyard.

 

I don't follow the logic here.  If Tidal goes belly up, I have other options to rent my music through other streaming services.  If streaming services are no longer available, you can always purchase the music via downloads. 

 

Buying CD's now to hedge against albums going out of print just doesn't make sense to me and you have simply realized a loss financially that I don't have to incur as of yet (and may never have to incur as long as streaming is around).  Yes, I would understand your logic if labels stopped selling downloads and all streaming services died, but a combination of all of these things is never going to happen. 

 

 I used to buy CD's (and I still purchase some vinyl from time to time so I have an excuse to use my turntable), but then realized this is pointless.  

 

I don't want or need the clutter of CD's in my life.

 

[wushuliu]

Just now, Blake said:

If Tidal goes belly up, I have other options to rent my music through streaming services.  If streaming services are no longer available, you can always purchase the music via downloads. 

 

That's a whole lot of assumptions in those two sentences. Your music may not be my music.

[Blake]

I

2 minutes ago, wushuliu said:

 

That's a whole lot of assumptions in those two sentences. Your music may not be my music.

 

A whole lot of assumptions on your part as well.  And yes, there is a very good chance we don't listen to the same type of music.

[wushuliu]

Just now, Blake said:

I

 

A whole lot of assumptions on your part as well.  

 

Wha? That doesn't even...

 

Look. Metallica is not on Tidal. So I can't listen to Metallica lossless there. I can't listen to them lossless on Google. Deezer? Maybe, haven't checked. People talk about Tidal, but Deezer's not looking very reliable either financing-wise. So I can 'just download' them from magic ether place where all things wait for me, right? Where is that?... Oh, the Metallica website.  Hmmm, my options sure seem to be thinning... but then, websites last forever, right?

 

And that's just Metallica.

 

And where can I stream the movie Truly, Madly, Deeply? Oh, right. I can't. I can pay $130 for the DVD though.

 

I feel like I'm on head-fi.

 

 

 

 

[Blake]

3 minutes ago, wushuliu said:

 

Wha? That doesn't even...

 

Look. Metallica is not on Tidal. So I can't listen to Metallica lossless there. I can't listen to them lossless on Google. Deezer? Maybe, haven't checked. People talk about Tidal, but Deezer's not looking very reliable either financing-wise. So I can 'just download' them from magic ether place where all things wait for me, right? Where is that?... Oh, the Metallica website.  Hmmm, my options sure seem to be thinning... but then, websites last forever, right?

 

And that's just Metallica.

 

And where can I stream the movie Truly, Madly, Deeply? Oh, right. I can't. I can pay $130 for the DVD though.

 

I feel like I'm on head-fi.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Logic:  I purchase everything, because you never know when labels might not make the music available for purchase.  Buy everything now!  Yeah right, because music labels don't want to make money.....  

 

And of course you pick quirky Metallica as your example.  Big deal, buy the download if you can't stream it.  Do you honestly believe that at some point Metallica will no longer want your money?

 

The difference between your assumptions and mine is that my assumptions cost me peanuts ($20 per month), yours, well let's just say a lot more than mine.

 

What is your Head-Fi quip supposed to mean?

 

 

[rn701]

Took a look at Deezer. They don't sound like a real company. Interested in checking out Quobuz. Remind me again, when are they coming to the US?

 

Maybe Google or Amazon will get into the hifi streaming business? Or maybe not. Spotify is crushing it in the streaming business, and they seem to have decided there's no market for hifi streaming.

 

So one might conclude that the hifi streaming business is DOA. CDs will soon be gone. Hifi/hirez downloads could soon follow. What's left for the mass  market? 

[mansr]

9 hours ago, rn701 said:

Interested in checking out Quobuz. Remind me again, when are they coming to the US?

When the greedy labels agree to a licensing deal, presumably.

[psjug]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

When the greedy labels agree to a licensing deal, presumably.

Maybe.  But it seems to me that part of the problem is that the services want to pretend that the pound is the same thing as a dollar is the same thing as a euro.  Why does the same service cost 10 CAD and 10 GBP?

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, psjug said:

Maybe.  But it seems to me that part of the problem is that the services want to pretend that the pound is the same thing as a dollar is the same thing as a euro.  Why does the same service cost 10 CAD and 10 GBP?

Greed and consumer psychology. Slightly less than ten monies is perceived as cheap regardless of currency, so the services set the price at 9.95. If this is slightly more than normal market pricing would arrive at, good for them. If it's slightly less, they'll probably make up for it in increased sales compared what they'd get if the price were 10.95, or so they believe.

[mav52]

How to Cope, rather simple, invest your money in another streaming service or buy music. 

[left channel]

13 hours ago, rn701 said:

Interested in checking out Quobuz. Remind me again, when are they coming to the US?

 

Qobuz.  "Mid-2018", per the English part of this press release.
https://static.qobuz.com/uploads/cms/files/presse/20180108-CP-Qobuz-CES-France.pdf
Usually hardware announced at CES ships by October. I'm not sure about services.

 

13 hours ago, rn701 said:

Maybe Google or Amazon will get into the hifi streaming business? Or maybe not.

 

Most likely not, IMHO. Too small for them. Qobuz charges a small number of customers a lot of money for Sublime and Sublime+ tiers. But for Google and Amazon, whether you count the customers or the money, we're just rounding errors to them.

 

13 hours ago, rn701 said:

So one might conclude that the hifi streaming business is DOA. CDs will soon be gone. Hifi/hirez downloads could soon follow. What's left for the mass market? 

 

The mass market — Deezer and Spotify — is slowly following Tidal into CD-quality FLAC at least. But Hi-Res? For now and maybe forever we're not the mass market, we're a niche market. I'm fine with that. But given ever-expanding storage and bandwidth, hey it could happen.

 

For now there's Qobuz as we said. I already subscribe to the UK service and am perpetually "roaming" in the US. HDtracks has been talking for a couple years about doing an MQA streaming service called HDmusicStream. But so far they are just integrating the Hi-Res HDtracks download service into high-end streaming products like Bluesound, and I'm sure there's more profit per sale in that.

 

Others like Pandora and Napster have been looking at Hi-Res streaming as a possible lifeline. They are in sad shape.

 

[psjug]

8 minutes ago, left channel said:

The mass market — Deezer and Spotify — is slowly following Tidal into CD-quality FLAC at least.

 

Have you heard something about Spotify planning to do more than 320kbps?

[left channel]

3 minutes ago, psjug said:

 

Have you heard something about Spotify planning to do more than 320kbps?

 

They've been offering a FLAC service to some users for at least a few months now. As far as I know it's still in a testing phase and you have to be invited.

[psjug]

1 minute ago, left channel said:

 

They've been offering a FLAC service to some users for at least a few months now. As far as I know it's still in a testing phase and you have to be invited.

Interesting.  I can imagine that if Spotify goes there, then the other large services might feel compelled to keep up with them.

[Rt66indierock]

2 hours ago, psjug said:

Interesting.  I can imagine that if Spotify goes there, then the other large services might feel compelled to keep up with them.

 

Spotify has been testing the market for CD quality streaming. There is a lot of price resistance. Even at $15 per month people won't buy in. And I must point out that Tidal is showing us there isn't a market for CD quality streaming. 

[left channel]

19 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Spotify has been testing the market for CD quality streaming. There is a lot of price resistance. Even at $15 per month people won't buy in. And I must point out that Tidal is showing us there isn't a market for CD quality streaming. 

 

Go figure. That's the price of one CD a month. Or one plate of avocado toast. ?

[psjug]

24 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Spotify has been testing the market for CD quality streaming. There is a lot of price resistance. Even at $15 per month people won't buy in. And I must point out that Tidal is showing us there isn't a market for CD quality streaming. 

I wonder how many or what percentage hifi subscriptions they need to make it worthwhile, assuming $20/mo.  It doesn't seem like the extra overhead would be that great for adding a hifi tier.

[Rt66indierock]

43 minutes ago, psjug said:

I wonder how many or what percentage hifi subscriptions they need to make it worthwhile, assuming $20/mo.  It doesn't seem like the extra overhead would be that great for adding a hifi tier.

 

18% isn't helping Tidal.

[left channel]

 

On 5/22/2018 at 5:00 PM, rn701 said:

 Interested in checking out Quobuz. Remind me again, when are they coming to the US?

 

On 5/23/2018 at 6:45 AM, left channel said:

 

Qobuz.  "Mid-2018", per the English part of this press release.
https://static.qobuz.com/uploads/cms/files/presse/20180108-CP-Qobuz-CES-France.pdf
Usually hardware announced at CES ships by October. I'm not sure about services.

 

They are making progress!  @Musicophile has discovered a relevant job post:

I still think their biggest business challenge will be getting us Mericans to just spell the dang name right. ?

[Ralf11]

Who has a really big music catalog?

 

How about Sony...

 

If streaming gets big (really big) or looks like it will... then the majors are gonna muscle in.

 

I don't care as I don't like to rent, and spend a fair amount of time in places where I am not under the cloud.

[AudioDoctor]

In my opinion, streaming will not be financially viable without paying substantially more for it.  May not be what some want to hear, but I think it is the way it has to be for streaming to continue.

[Snowmonkey]

Qobuz has Metallica.

Has anyone in the US tried opening a streaming account with Qobuz using a VPN?  Once the account exists, they don't geolocate. (I know from experience).

[left channel]

49 minutes ago, Snowmonkey said:

Qobuz has Metallica.

Has anyone in the US tried opening a streaming account with Qobuz using a VPN?  Once the account exists, they don't geolocate. (I know from experience).

 

Yes I have. Clear your browser cache in case you've been to their website before, VPN to the UK, sign up with Qobuz UK using PayPal (no address, no forex), download the desktop app, and log off. No VPN needed after that. Or just wait for them to launch in the US.

[left channel]

3 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

In my opinion, streaming will not be financially viable without paying substantially more for it.  May not be what some want to hear, but I think it is the way it has to be for streaming to continue.

 

Hence the Qobuz Sublime and Sublime+ tiers. They are indeed substantially more.