Article: Amazon Music HD Launches

[MarkS]

28 minutes ago, bubbleguuum said:

That's really a huge blow for TIDAL, Qobuz and Roon.

 

As a company you never ever want to have to compete directly with the usual behemoths (Google, Apple, Amazon, ...).

 

Qobuz still have some differentiation in its catalogue in Europe, good hardware support, excellent metadata, pdf booklets, excellent editorial content, reduced priced for downloads with the higher tier subscription, great apps, a web player that can play FLAC on all platforms, Roon integration. And generally they have the culture of high quality audio, which reflects in everything they do. If you enjoy what Qobuz has to offer, don't leave now.

 

Roon will be OK if they can integrate Amazon HD. But I can see this being difficult with either Amazon not interested or Roon wanting their own specific interexchange format for metadata with Amazon not giving a damn. And there's the quality of metadata on Amazon which remains to be seen. And if TIDAL or Qobuz have problems as a consequence to this new Amazon service, this is a problem for Roon.

 

Also, I could be wrong, but do not expect anytime soon to be able to access Amazon HD in anything else than direct hardware integrations and (of course) Amazon's own apps. That's very limiting. No BubbleUPnP, mConnect, Audirvana, ...

 

Agree 100%. I’m very worried about Roon especially. I just don’t seem Amazon giving a cr*p about Roon at all, or any external player for that matter. Why would they?

[MarkS]

4 hours ago, Bootzilla said:

I am not jumping ship from Tidal HiFi, as I pay $5.00 per month via the Tidal deal for Third Man Records 'Vault' subscribers.  I do worry, though, that Amazon HD Music could put Tidal and Qobuz out of business, and then Amazon would be in position to raise prices to $20.00 per month (or more).  

 

I understand your legitimate concern in this regard, but I personally worry less about price and more about quality.  I think Tidal and Qobuz actually care about us audiophiles, but Amazon won’t care or is just too big to focus on our small niche. For example, Amazon is probably never going to come to places like this website to learn about all of the issues “we” identify, discuss, debate (vigorously 😀), resolve, etc. To me, that’s the concern.  

 

I can’t begin to know how to get Amazon’s hires streaming service through my digital rig at home (except maybe by connecting a Bluesound Node), and, from what I’ve read here, I probably shouldn’t even bother because there’s no way it sounds nearly as good as Tidal or Qobuz using Roon or dCS Mosaic.  If Amazon’s hires service indeed kills alternatives, SQ ultimately could suffer, which would be ironic and unfortunate.  Thus, I will continue to support both Tidal and Qobuz for the foreseeable future. 

[MarkS]

4 hours ago, IH8usrnames said:

If Spotify begins to offer truly lossless 16/44.1 FLAC, I will run back to them so fast it would make your head spin.
 

 

Upon reading this, I’ve completely changed my view. Yesterday, I lamented that Amazon’s offering might tank Qobuz and Tidal. Now I’m happily hoping it pushes Spotify to hires.