Tidal

Jay Z's new $20 a month lossless-quality streaming service is go as of this evening. At this stage i'm not sure it's even available outside of the US but the official spiel reads as follows

"Panther believes that the recent developments in the entertainment industry, with the migration to music and media streaming, offers great potential for increased entertainment consumption and an opportunity for artists to further promote their music."

-

Interesting to read that Taylor Swift is going to be on it, after her much-publicised dissing of Spotify. Presumably it means they're offering a much fairer shake for the artists.

Anyway..

http://tidal.com/us

How large is the catalogue expected to be?

I think the issue Taylor has with Spotify was that the music is available freely - she's still on plenty of other services that just have radio etc. for free users (which is the most any of them except Spotify offer free users I think?). It looks like this is premium only with a second tier for FLAC streaming.

catalogue-wise there are all manner of interviews and suchlike on the site; Courtney Bartnett, Noel Gallagher etc. what that means though is anyone's guess.

there's an A/B test for lossless streaming, I can't tell the difference tbh http://test.tidalhifi.com/

But will I be able to listen to Fiona Apple on it?

i'm trying to find details on artist compensation/royalties, here's all i've found so far:

“Since our service is double the price of regular market standard streaming services, payouts per user will also be double.” It definitely bears mentioning that payouts are so pitiful, not even doubling them will have enough of an impact, but it’s absolutely a step in the right direction.

Except this thing is going to get way fewer users, so the artists will probably get even less than they do from Spotify.

so there's no free tier for this service right?

the true test is whether they have hounds of love, spotify's greatest omission

US spotify, at least. apparently it's on there in other regions

That hifi test is meaningless on my desktop speakers, which aren't cheap but aren't home theater quality either. I'll stick with Spotify thx.

Yeah if you haven't got there's no point. I've been streaming 320 quality Spotify to a big hi-fi system for some time and it still sounds pretty great, but I'm tempted to give the trial a go.

Haven't got the speakers, was what I meant to say.

just listened to the hifi bit on their site, it strikes me as cheating to kick in the lossless version just as the track started popping off on its own

if spotify goes up to 320 there's no way that 99.9% of people will be able to tell the difference between that and this

a lot of the artifacting in lossy compression is in the really high frequencies that most people can't hear anyway

yeah most people couldn't give a toss about content and sound quality so i guess i can't see why anyone would make the change.

if spotify goes up to 320

spotify is already at 320. at least on mobile anyway.

and most people have never given a toss about sound quality, ever. they heard the beatles on either transistor radios or portable record players with built-in speakers; prince and madonna on cassette tapes on walkmen with $19 headphones; beyonce and kanye west on laptop speakers or apple earbuds. this is one constant that goes back to the beginning of the time. convenience/accessibility matters to most people. sound quality does not.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/237292/all-the-ghostly-sounds-that-are-lost-when-you-compress-to-mp3/

^^^ This was doing the rounds a few weeks ago, so it appears you do actually lose quite a lot in the process. But what you lose is mostly high-end and mostly the end of a note ringing out, after most listeners' ears have moved onto something else in the music. The areas where retaining that sound detail really matters to me - ambient, classical, folk or other sparse acoustic music - are I suspect those least likely to be featured in depth here (initially at least). I'm not sure how much extra benefit you're going to get from listening to Katy Perry or Kanye in lossless when that music has surely been designed to be listened to in MP3.

(I think Spotify only goes up to 320 in premium, and even then you have to manually select it iirc).

(I think Spotify only goes up to 320 in premium, and even then you have to manually select it iirc).

that's all true. and when you do go to your settings to manually select it, the app recommends you stick with a lower quality. i have no idea why. i listen on a (now slightly dated) iphone with (always awful) at&t service, and i've never had any issues with my "extreme" sound quality setting. and, yes, "extreme" is what spotify calls 320k.

i couldn't believe that *so* much info could be missing; especially the intakes of breath etc. i thought there's no way that is the case with say, The Beatles remasters.
but hey wtf do i know.

xp its bc of how much data you burn through on your plan when you listen at higher quality levels via 3G or 4G

also surely if hi-hi systems, PCs, headphones, etc are getting better then aren't we (those of us with half decent headphones, hi-fis) hearing *more* than before not less?
ok so there was 'more' info on a CD or a tape but we were playing them through shitty Sony 80s ghetto blasters and cheap walkmen headphones and car stereos and such, so how much of that 'info' were we actually hearing anyway?

i have no idea why

Disk space + data costs, I guess?

This all reminds me of some godawful BBC documentary recently when they played Steve Albini a Shellac record through an MP3 player for the first time (yeah, right) and he was ostentatiously wincing at how terrible and tinny it sounded. Except they were playing it on the cheapest shittiest white Apple earbuds, on which even the full studio master would sound terrible.

<<ok so there was 'more' info on a CD or a tape but we were playing them through shitty Sony 80s ghetto blasters and cheap walkmen headphones and car stereos and such, so how much of that 'info' were we actually hearing anyway?>>

^^^this

I don't think anyone has ever claimed cassette types are better quality than MP3 fwiw.

*Prays scik mouthy never finds this thread*

and most people have never given a toss about sound quality, ever. they heard the beatles on either transistor radios or portable record players with built-in speakers; prince and madonna on cassette tapes on walkmen with $19 headphones; beyonce and kanye west on laptop speakers or apple earbuds. this is one constant that goes back to the beginning of the time. convenience/accessibility matters to most people. sound quality does not.

― fact checking cuz, Monday, March 30, 2015 4:31 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think with the rise of the mini-boom in audio heralded by Beats you have people caring about """sound quality""", I mean when even the lex is harping about not being able to find 320 kbps mp3s of songs he likes you gotta admit there's been at least some rising of the water level

I do live under a rock but this is the first I heard about Tidal (on Twitter):

Haxan Cloak ✔ @haxan_cloak
This is so shameful. Thanks for not getting in touch and ripping me off, Tidal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k265USTK9wo …
Please retweet!

mini-boom in audio heralded by Beats

huh? a service that hardly anyone has, and that even if you do have it designed to be played thru your iphone headphones? how is that a mini-boom in audio?

Audio equipment - did you hear of anybody paying $200 for headphones 10 years ago?

News about that meeting leaked out a few weeks ago:
http://www.showbiz411.com/2015/03/13/exclusive-jay-z-had-secret-pow-wow-with-music-superstars-including-beyonce-madonna-kanye-coldplay-to-start-renegade-streaming-service

Audio equipment - did you hear of anybody paying $200 for headphones 10 years ago?

ha, sorry, i thought you were talking about the beats streaming service.

but even so, no -- i think people who pay $200 for beats headphones are buying marketing and logos, not sound quality. that's a fashion boom, not an audio boom.

That Haxan Cloak hissy fit is hilarious imo.

Eh, part of the sell is the 'audio quality'

maaaannn this press conference is the height of hilarity

Like, good enough for Dr. Dre to use in the studio! xxp

deadmaus has opposable thumbs. who knew?

(xp) check out a few studios that aren't run by people who own beats, and see how many of them are using beats headphones.

How come the Tidal press conference looks like a Scientology speech

http://i.imgur.com/hFKgy56.png

http://i.imgur.com/3K1Aayv.jpg

(xp) check out a few studios that aren't run by people who own beats, and see how many of them are using beats headphones.

― fact checking cuz, Monday, March 30, 2015 5:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Lol why are you telling me this

because you're using beats-in-real-music-studios as a defense of the brand!

xxp i mean some of those folks are scientologists right?

I can't even believe that your reading comprehension is so poor

You've been on this board for a minute

Take a step back from the computer dude

xp

what am i not comprehending? feel free to let me know while i take a step back.

Is their catalog like Spotify or like Pono?

Rly weird how many celebrities're changing profile pics etc and going out of their way to promote this, guess it's an Illuminati thing

eh i imagine they have nothing to lose by taking a day and a chunk of money to throw their support -- no matter how big you are, if Jay-Z calls and asks you to do something, you probably at least think about it

???

So, Tidal launches today. Creatively, what do you hope happens, beginning tomorrow?

Artists come here and start making songs 18 minutes long, or whatever. I know this is going to sound crazy, but maybe they start attempting to make a “Like a Rolling Stone,” you know, a song that doesn’t have a recognizable hook, but is still considered one of the greatest songs of all time, the freedom that this platform will allow art to flourish here. And we’re encouraging people to put it in any format they like. It doesn't have to be three minutes and 30 seconds. What if it’s a minute and 17, what if it’s 11; you know, just break format. What if it’s just four minutes of just music and then you start rapping?

like a rapping stone!

ILM might want to suspend the epics poll, what with all this major new epic content on the way.

It'll probably mostly be 4 minute songs with an extra 8 minutes of fake 2Pac interviews.

ZONG

tiers! fucking love jay-z's illuminati fantasies

doesn’t have a recognizable hook
hmm, it kinda borrows one of the most recognizable pop hooks of all time - la bamba!

the dumb things ppl say about "like a rolling stone" in a sad attempt to praise it just make me dislike it more

^^sounds like someone needs to learn a little bit about the magical 1960s when the doors of perception were thrown open wide and we all bathed in the light of pure illumination

anyway! tidal. who cares. let's all listen to CDs.

this feels ridiculous in the same way as Pono

Until a second ago I figured this was a Fiona Apple thread. And then when I learned what it was I came here to make a Pono joke.

anyway! tidal. who cares. let's all listen to CDs.

i think that's the tidal model. for $19.95 a month, every time you click on a song, a well-paid employee at tidal headquarters immediately puts the corresponding cd into your own dedicated player and plays it back for you.

http://gawker.com/the-worlds-most-famous-musicians-just-hosted-a-bonkers-1694627052?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Gawker mocking the millionaires

Imagine this: canceling your Spotify subscription, and paying $20 for a Tidal subscription instead. It's more expensive because it's "higher quality" and "artist-owned," which is important because Usher, Daft Punk, and Madonna have been living in wretched penury for far too long, and it's time for people to give back. The modern-day Our Gang (which counted among its members not only the aforementioned supernovas, but also Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Chris Martin, and Jack White) held a "keynote" to promote Tidal, the already extant European streaming company Jay Z recently purchased for $56 million because he's bored.

...listen to Alicia Keys give an incoherent speech. At the conclusion of Keys' statement, which merged the rarely combined traits of being about an app and quoting Nietzsche, the artists all signed some sort of "declaration" one by one. I don't know what the document said—it was probably just a blank piece of paper, or perhaps an original copy of the Declaration of Independence that Deadmau5 received as a White Elephant gift.

madonna crawled on the table to sign it, I lol'd

despite this cavalcade of stars i just don't see tidal - or spotify - throwing the most money at exclusives, which is the only thing that will matter when all the streaming services are offering more or less the same thing. google or apple can outspend them many times over, on a sustained basis. like a war of attrition where your enemy has almost bottomless reserves.

meanwhile i'll be over here shrugging at streaming services and buying CDs/mp3s (as long as I still can)

So, does Tidal use WAV files?

this is not a likely winner

Can you tidal ponos

I dgaf abt previous pono jokes it's just so satisfying to type ponos

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349734569l/16045037.jpg

This is so great I kept seeing this as headlines throughout the day and thought it was some kind of celebrity charity thing a la "Live Aid" but no. I thought it was to help some tidal wave disaster or something. Hahahah. These guys. Can't blame them for trying to make as much money as possible but still, it's just too obvious at this point...

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2015/03/30/tidal/

i never took economics, is this what a cartel is

Jz paid $56 million for this shit???

Jay don't need no hook for this shit

let that shit breathe

A note to all artists involved: write better music.

definitely trying this for a month of free 1989. I try all of these things.

like, to be fair, this was what i was suggesting major artists do for years and have been pushing for streaming curation forever but this is very very late to the party

https://medium.com/cuepoint/tidal-wave-or-shallow-pool-27f148337cc7

In a way, Tidal is a product without an audience. Hardcore fans probably already use Spotify or Rdio and there’s not much to convince them to shift. Casual fans are using Pandora for background music. Older fans are probably beyond the point of signing up for something because someone famous promoted it. Younger fans weren’t really represented on stage, except by Nicki Minaj and Rihanna. Rock fans only got Arcade Fire (BTW, Win, please square your comments about broke artists “selling out” by accepting free burritos with your decision to own part of a streaming company) and Jack White, who now has interests in both vinyl pressing and streaming music. He’s the music version of the corporate exec who gives money to both parties, just to be sure.

good to have videos and curated playlists. articles and interviews could be cool if the writing is good. def support the pay only model if that's what it takes to make streaming sustainable. don't care about higher than 320kbps quality. this kinda just look like mog. I left mog for spotify because of amount of music available and the better apps at the time (suppose this is lol now, but the mog ipad app was o_O back then).

worth noting that tidal does have a ten dollar model with standard quality streaming; if the curation/writing is strong i could see transitioning but i would need for them to be able to transfer playlists.
ime the shift to a new provider only happens when the old provider implodes; that medium piece is roughly otm that there's no market niche being filled here.

I see "oh the egos" thrown around a lot I don't necessarily agree w that criticism tho (that is a large part of the reason they are at the level they are) but that list of artists is so over-saturated that I could hear songs by every artist in an hour or two of running errands. I can't see the point of paying for more of what I would rather have less of but if you are a fan I guess the more choice the better.

Trying it out now because of the regular fi option's 30 day trial. Still no Hounds of Love. It's got all the Peter Gabriel albums, which US Spotify doesn't, but it's also missing some under the radar indie stuff that Spotify does have. Also, there's no standalone client. It's browser-based, which is basically a dealbreaker.

lol @ how us spotify had peter gabriel for like a week

Oh hang on. The PG albums are there, but they're designated "Unavailable for streaming" so fuck you very much.

is 1989 available? or just the older swift?

guess I can find out for myself

It looks like just the older Taylor albums are up.

Do people really use streaming services

Almost exclusively, yeah.

thanks, JF

"browser based" = thanks, i'll pass

So, UX wise this is pretty nice. A lot neater and more finished looking than either Spotify or Rdio, but the list of most popular tracks on each artist page is 10 instead of Spotify's 5 which means more vertical scrolling. You can enlarge the album art, but you can't save it. Playlist making is as simple as any other service. Would be interested to see if they do enable porting of playlists from other services down the road. Still the main gripe is that it's browser based, which is something I don't think I'd ever come around to liking/using.

https://tidalsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202692602-Desktop-Application-Unavailable-for-Download

There is a desktop app in development (or redevelopment), so all hope is not lost.

one mostly unremarked bit of news today was that sony gave up on the music unlimited streaming service and now offers spotify on PS4 and PS3 consoles for in-game streaming of playlists
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2015/03/30/spotify-launches-on-playstation-music-today/

I hate streaming with a passion.

streaming is dumb yeah

why

spotify is trash

streaming is great

Streaming is great for me, because I never went to the trouble of cataloguing all my mp3s (because I hate iTunes and other bulky mp3 players), so something like Spotify where you can just type something in the search field and hit play is great. Also, since my car stereo is bluetooth equipped, I can use the app on my phone to just beam a gazillion albums straight to it. Streaming is fucking rad.

*pays monthly fee for shit*

is this tanuki premium?

$10 is peanuts considering how much I use it.

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2015/03/30/tidal/

good for a dn

browser-based? oh dear that's a shot in the foot and no mistake. the auto-start soon as you switch the PC on is a big part of the appeal for me and i'm sure many others. sounds dreadfully lazy that but you know.. it's neat.

it's probably unfair to compare the 2 but the launch needed something more like this and less like a bunch of corporate stiffs signing pieces of paper.

http://c0248141.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/BDDC_06137_0048992A.JPG

I hate streaming with a passion.

― raih dednelb (The Reverend), Tuesday, March 31, 2015 5:53 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

streaming is dumb yeah

― deej loaf (D-40), Tuesday, March 31, 2015 5:54 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't hate streaming, but I do wonder what all the streaming champions are going to do when Spotify goes under.

Guys you know there isn't actually any difference, from the pov of the listener, between streaming an album and listening to it on MP3, right? Also RMDE at anyone cosigning that sentiment who has also made a Youtube playlist.

If Spotify does go down, it's not like music will suddenly become difficult to come by, nothing's going to vanish overnight. FWIW I still think Google or Apple or someone will buy Spotify before it goes down - why wouldn't they?

why's it going down??

MP3 in 320 and Spotify in 320 seems very different to me but i like things kinda treble-y and Spotify (for reasons that remain a mystery) has no graphic equalizer.

nothing's going to vanish overnight

apart from all your playlists and saved albums, which is basically an outsourced chunk of my musical memory (i don't have the spare braincells these days)(is there an easy way to export and save such data?)

between streaming an album and listening to it on MP3, right

everyone who uses spotify has a default must have a much better broadband provider than i've ever had (and how do you even do it while travelling?)

spotify is still pretty bad for being able to consistently listen to what i want to without having to switch back to itunes so i've never been remotely tempted. on the rare occasion i log in the adverts do my head in and the interface is clunky.

i had no idea until yesterday that it was in any way low quality sound though! who gives a fuck about that kind of audio fidelity outside of a bret easton ellis novel and/or scik mouthy

The interface is annoyingly clunky but on a decent broadband connection the streaming is fine. On mobile it's pretty much the best option there is for on-demand listening (you can download to your phone, but I wouldn't to that if I didn't have an unlimited data tariff). Anything I really like I make sure I have on MP3 anyway, I'd never rely solely on streaming and I suspect most listeners don't.

It's easy to take the piss out of things like yesterday's launch but surely any competition in this market is a good thing? The existing services are far from perfect and anything that encourages proper improvements is a good thing. The big problem I foresee is when services start battling each other for content and entire catalogues start disappearing from one service and reappearing on another. That'll probably be the beginning or the end because Spotify's big plus point is the size of its catalogue.

really thought exclusive content could've been a game-changer for tidal - if v annoying for the consumer - but no new rihanna album, no new kanye album, it's one thing to show your face at a launch and do a tweet but no one was really up for a step as big as that

how does spotify work when you're out of signal on your mobile? which is a lot of the time

I don't bother streaming on mobile, the interface allows you to download the album or playlist straight to your phone (either over wi-fi or mobile).

that sounds rubbish unless you've decided in advance what you'll want to listen to for your entire travelling time

You don't - you can do it when you're out and about, unless you're in a 3G black spot like the Tube or the middle of the countryside. I regularly download thing and listen to them on a whim throughout my commute, like every day.

no new rihanna album, no new kanye album

Can you elaborate on this, given that neither have been released yet? If they're not going to be on Tidal at all then that's ridiculous.

the tube, the countryside and aeroplanes are pretty large parts of travelling listening though. like great i have a 3hr train journey and spotify won't work.

(there was speculation that rihanna and/or kanye would release exclusive tidal-only material as part of the launch, i'm not sure how seriously anyone expected that but if it had happened it would've been pretty huge)

Also in what universe is the technology going to get any worse? In a few years' time there'll probably be full mobile data coverage pretty much everywhere. No one's advocating streaming to the exclusion of all else, but you're essentially using your lack of familiarity with the technology to justify your already-made decision that it's basically shit.

xp I'm about to take a three-hour train journey. I have around 1300 tracks downloaded to Spotify at 320-equivalent on my phone, including my rolling current tracks and current albums playlists. Around 300 of those tracks weren't on the Spotify database, so I dragged and dropped them from iTunes into the desired playlist positions within the Spotify desktop client. I almost never use iTunes to play music, because it's so straightforward to seamlessly integrate MP3s into Spotify playlists. If I use iTunes for playback, I've only got access to a minority of the music I might want to play. If I use Spotify for playback, then I can access all of it.

Seems insane to me that anyone could call this amazing technology 'shit.'

Also, yes, it seems insane to me that they didn't tie this in to some massive release(s) - how could they have been so blind with this? If the thing launched with the new Kanye people would be sprinting to sign up rather than laughing it off entirely

I actually think Spotify's library feature is terrible, I don't understand why they don't just lift that functionality from iTunes or any number of half-decent media players so that you only ever need to use one desktop player.

I hate streaming with a passion.

― raih dednelb (The Reverend), Monday, March 30, 2015 10:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

streaming is dumb yeah

― deej loaf (D-40), Monday, March 30, 2015 10:54 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why

― jaymc, Monday, March 30, 2015 10:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have spotty wifi and a weak data plan, plus I'm a dj and need mp3/wav to play out. Also I just intuitively hate it.

What's the difference between downloading via Spotify onto your phone for places with no signal vs. sticking to MP3s altogether so you don't have to do all that in the same situation?

If Spotify goes under we all have to use tapes again.

I don't really play music on my phone tbh.

Usually if I do it's hooked up to someone's stereo at their house or somewhere else, rather than on the go with headphones.

xp a) The Spotify option works out cheaper (although I still end up buying the stuff I love the most), b) The download-to-phone process is automatic - the phone just synchs of its own accord, to playlists pre-designated as offline, and it synchs extremely quickly. I used to hate faffing around with iPods.

I play music wirelessly from my phone all the time at home. The music goes through a Bluetooth-enabled DAC into a multi-room hi-fi. I've done comparative tests between the same tracks on the phone and on CD, and the difference is minor.

whats the difference between owning something & having to keep up payments to have access to it?

well, if you are broke or cant pay your bill you can still listen to the cd you own, the mp3 you paid for

but lets talk about what streaming really is: its a way to rebuild the music industry. Meaning: a way to rebuild the pooled money that enables investment in new artists and all the financial inefficiencies of the old system

charge me a buck for a song & everything is great. an artist could just put it up on their own website—business handled

do the artists get a better percentage here than from spotify ?

still totally depends on the deal between the artist and their label

That would be the only reason I would switch.

If you are going to support a music distribution service or moral terms or concern for artists, support BANDCAMP not Tidal.

an artist could just put it up on their own website—business handled

why spend money on artist websites when they/we can all use the same distributor?

Speaking to Billboard Jay Z said: "We didn’t like the direction music was going and thought maybe we could get in and strike an honest blow and if, you know, the very least we did was make people wake up and try to improve the free vs. paid system, and promote fair trade, then it would be a win for us anyway."

streaming is not going to replace owning a file or physical copy of a record for a lot of people with a lot of particular preferences and purposes. but streaming is pretty great when it suits you. i always dreamed of having a version of the iTunes store where i just pay a flat fee and can listen to everything on it, no 99 cents a song or anything. it's great. it suits my music listening needs more often than not these days.

it disappoints me that Spotify seemed to rush to be free and cheap and eager to please in the name of dominating the streaming market before anyone else could, because streaming was gonna be big no matter what and they set a low standard for pricing (and royalties for artists) that will be hard for Tidal or anyone else to go against. already i see a ton of people balking at $20/month for unlimited streaming like that wouldn't have seemed like an amazing deal 4-5 years ago (and still is by any reasonable standard).

^^ totally agree.

OTM but you could argue YT set just as bad a precedent in allowing totally free uploading and viewing. Knowing a lot of people would happily use YT just for listening as much as viewing meant they had to keep the price lower. No on-demand service to date has actually tried to charge much more than £10/$10 per month have they?

it disappoints me that Spotify seemed to rush to be free and cheap and eager to please in the name of dominating the streaming market before anyone else could, because streaming was gonna be big no matter what and they set a low standard for pricing (and royalties for artists) that will be hard for Tidal or anyone else to go against. already i see a ton of people balking at $20/month for unlimited streaming like that wouldn't have seemed like an amazing deal 4-5 years ago (and still is by any reasonable standard).

― some dude, Tuesday, March 31, 2015 7:27 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^ totally agree.

― out here like a flopson (tpp), Tuesday, March 31, 2015 7:34 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

THIS

I'm old-fashioned, I guess, but I prefer to buy and own music I love.

Maybe I'm cheap or old-fashioned (most likely both) but $10 per month, let alone 20, is a lot for something that leaves me with nothing (except checking out music, which you can do freely in other places)

OTM but you could argue YT set just as bad a precedent in allowing totally free uploading and viewing. Knowing a lot of people would happily use YT just for listening as much as viewing meant they had to keep the price lower. No on-demand service to date has actually tried to charge much more than £10/$10 per month have they?

― nashwan, Tuesday, March 31, 2015 8:35 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's "we didn't start the fire" -- every corner of the music industry dropped the ball in a hundred ways since the advent of the internet for us to get to where we are right now.

precedent, it wasn't a precedent, it was a power move to move into an unexploited market space so that later they could start charging for all the shit people had become accustomed to thanks to the original illegal content used to get them accustomed to it

YouTube becoming an important portal for music, or even becoming a big deal at all, was kind of a freak accident. unlike Spotify, which set out to do pretty much exactly what it has done.

Yeah YouTube for music seems like a classic case of no one's ever able to fully predict how people use a technology

the problem w/ youtube for music is the tracks are always noticeably compressed, it's like going back to the old lower quality mp3s from the filesharing days

feel like we're getting close to the point where kids born in the 90s get nostalgic for the "warmth" of low bit rate mp3s.

VHS Hipsters on the march

honestly VHS was a stealth great medium for audio recording, you could make like hours-long mixtapes, it was a pretty wide tape too so the fidelity was good, i actually knew one professional recording guy that recorded to VHS some

pssshhhhtt, beta's where it's at mang

One of my friends is still doing VHS audio recordings.

lol, i think the first time i heard my bloody valentine was from a video my friend had taped off of 120 minutes -- and i said dude, i can't listen to this in such terrible wobbly quality.

I've seen posts on other forums by audiophiles who claim that using VCRs (even Super-VHS ones) just for audio added ungodly amounts of compression, essentially negating the benefits of the higher fidelity resulting from the wider tape. Never heard for myself, though.

VHS does sound amazing this is true, all the warmth of thick tape compression. Plus it is insanely cheap thrift stores are practically giving tapes away.

Thing abt paying for streaming w/o owning a physical copy is I listen to a lot of music on the go; if I'm going to be streaming all of this then it's going to eat the shit out of my data plan, it's going to drain my battery extra hard, and it's not going to work in dead zones/airplane mode. Why on earth would I choose to do this?

Like I get why many other people who listen to music differently would like this but I feel like there must be tons of ppl in my boat too, eh?

it's going to eat the shit out of my data plan, it's going to drain my battery extra hard

get spotify premium, save a shitload of albums when you have access to a wifi connection, walk around listening to those all day long and when you get fed up with them just delete them all and save a whole new bunch of stuff. this is me with my ipod basically, and £10 is an amazing bargain

£10 per month

i gave up physical media almost completely about seven years ago and it's been a good choice.
i continue to buy discs from artists or at shows but that stuff tends to get filed and often not even opened.

In related topics there was an article on the new streaming features for Youtube and it had a bunch of 4k video examples. While it is super cool that video of that quality is now streamable online, it took so long to buffer that it wasn't worth it. I think HD streaming is a good idea but the US needs to get it's act together internet-wise first.

whats the difference between owning something & having to keep up payments to have access to it?

posts very much in century

this bey curated list is a tidal board meeting roll call

again, i don't see tidal (or spotify) keeping up with google and apple in a long-term bidding war for exclusives. i just don't see how it works out for them. especially with no sub-$10 tier. a "high end" business model doesn't work when you have no hardware to sell and no point of distinction.

def signed up right after spotify app started playing songs out of order for no reason. so this has at least been cathartic.

Meaning: a way to rebuild the pooled money that enables investment in new artists and all the financial inefficiencies of the old system

Just so I'm clear... Are you totally serious here?

xp thats weird, of all the many probs i've had with the spotify mobile app in the past (most of which have been corrected), never seen that

so...is this shit worth a free trial?

if you are currently putting out your album as a much hyped bells and whistles front-page pre-order on iTunes (with attendant extras, exclusive tracks etc) and you switch from doing that to going through Tidal instead, doesn't that kill off a massive amount of the promo to your potential non-fan audience? to the floating non-fan who chooses to take a punt buying on iTunes because ALBUM X is only £4.99 pre-order or whatever? and if that audience that's then missing, isn't replaced by a similar audience via Tidal then surely as an artist that's a disaster. it's like a small tv station saying 'we'll put your advert on our channel exclusively, never mind using ITV'.

xp only happens on the desktop app, but happens once a day at least. it's a free trial, so why not. making spotify sweat can only be a good thing.

iTunes application fee is not bad at all, I'm assuming it would be significantly more to apply for Tidal.

exclusive content wars will of course only encourage piracy more

are you sure you do not have shuffle accidentally enabled

It's of mild interest, I think, that the streaming services are battling for exclusives even as the physical side of the industry is launching a single global release date this summer.

xp I am sure

it plays the wrong song when I double click a track, too.

get spotify premium, save a shitload of albums when you have access to a wifi connection, walk around listening to those all day long and when you get fed up with them just delete them all and save a whole new bunch of stuff. this is me with my ipod basically, and £10 is an amazing bargain

― yeovil knievel (NickB), Tuesday, March 31, 2015 10:58 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg is that how it works??? i am going to srsly look into this now

though tbh that is still $10 more than just d/ling whatever I want and throwing it on (though it is certainly more convenient to do it all in-app in Spotify)

yeah, it's def more convenient. remember to pick the quality you want for the downloads before you start, or else you may have to re-download at higher/lower quality later.

Artist exclusives on Tidal/iTunes feel a bit like the Best Buy/Wal-Mart exclusives of the 2000s.

Is the new Earl on there?

Target still gets a bunch of exclusive tracks it's really annoying

Like I gotta steal it twice once I find out from the wikipedia page that the Target edition has bonus tracks

xp I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside is on there

Recording audio onto VHS? Just audio? :O

If you are going to support a music distribution service or moral terms or concern for artists, support BANDCAMP not Tidal.

― kurt kobaïan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, March 31, 2015 4:59 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^

another vote for bandcamp

bandcamp really is great - an easy to use virtual merch table. feels like you're handing your money directly to the artists. (i know it's not quite as simple as that, but it's close!)

Agreed. I can't get worked up about Tidal at all because there's no relevancy to what/where/how I listen these days. For me, Bandcamp is where it's at.

what is the complication? xp

or sorry, do you know how it isn't as simple as that by chance, i am pretty dumb with it, always assumed bc took some kind of flat fee off the top?

nm i just googled their pricing page

yeah i just mean bandcamp is getting something out of it, but it all seems straightforward and fair to me...

Bandcamp recently hit a milestone of $100 million in payouts to artist clients. probably doesn't seem like much compared to Spotify's $2 million paid to labels and publishers, but i'm sure Bandcamp has gotten a lot more money to musicians relative to how many people have used the site.

Bandcamp rules so much. You can put up demos for free or you can charge differently for each song, there is no barrier to entry, and the downloads are in whatever quality you want. It really kind of has it all.

It's telling that of all the mega-star musicians-many of whom are sitting on unreleased albums and singles right now-none of them have chosen to use this opportunity to release an exclusive single or something on it. It's all old stuff. How about putting your money where your mouth is?

^^
DING DING DING

could it be a situation where if one involved artist released an exclusive they'd all have to

(pure speculation, quite possibly bullshit, I have no idea)

Just to be an armchair PR person, it seems like today (Day 2) would've been the perfect time to launch some exclusive thing that would get people to sign up, then add something tomorrow, lead up to the weekend, and so on. Instead, day 2 came and went.

If Kanye doesn't release his album on Easter Sunday I'll eat my keyboard

he should hide the album

maybe on a music streaming service that failed because nobody used it

i used to love walkmen, but i love sound quality more now.

Kanye should release his album in an Easter egg.

would have to be fabergye

I'm all for this. I hate free Spotify and so for some reason don't feel like supporting them, plus I'm getting tired of incessant iphone syncing to add/remove music + want to be able to check out albums without downloading them illegally. So yeah, the premium fee is fine with me. And knowing that an upgrade is possible if, at some point, I'm convinced that I need the extra sound quality doesn't hurt either.

The only thing I miss (and that its prototype, wimp, has or had) is the possibility to actually buy the mp3s if you want to own them.

free spotify is awful, paid for spotify is like a whole new software. it's hard to imagine the difference until you try.

Tidal offers 128kbps for the same price spotify offers 320kbps. End of debate for now.

Another factor increasingly affecting this is how many different things people are willing to pay a monthly (or annual) sub for. The saturation of the streaming market will hurt everyone, possibly leading to more partnership deals (one bigger subscription getting you access to multiple sites content).

$10 tidal gets you 320kbps

You can buy 128s? How? Sounds very weird to me.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-problem-with-tidal-isnt-price-its-almost-115122153009.html

This tech editor doesn't like Tidal's search feature and more

I'm getting mood playlists and also tolerable suggestions for other stuff when I search for artists. My main issue right now is that it apparently won't let me play music on several devices at the same time. A huge mistake imo. I need to be able to share my account with the wife and kids and there's no way we're going to be listening to the same stuff in the same room all the time.

yes, that is true for spotify as well. spotify just introduced family pricing where you can add someone to your bill for $5 instead of $10, however.

$10 tidal gets you 320kbps

― And let’s say a new Hozier comes along, and Spotify outbids you (Sufjan Grafton),

not according their own site it doesn't.

tidal says $10 gets you "standard bitrate" which their FAQ says is 96aac (128)

Well you're reading it wrong. "Premium" gives you the choice between 320 and 96.

possibly mobile only? I did the $10 version and here's where my stream setting is at
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1484956/tidal%20qual.png

so their front page that says:

TIDAL Premium

Standard sound quality. High definition music videos. Expertly curated editorial.

OK well they need to reword their site.

https://tidalsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201594722-How-good-is-the-sound-quality-on-TIDAL-

In that link they define "standard sound quality" as 96AAC.

So that's a ridiculous and misleading oversight.

So even if they do offer 320, I still don't get why anyone would make the switch? And after that lauch party, surely no one would want to?

haha c'mon it's a mistake, but it's not ridiculous.

think it depends on how good their added content is. there's an exclusive rihanna track today, apparently.

just sign up for free and put a cancellation reminder on your calendar. competition is good imo.

honestly if they don't have a sorting hat, i'm not interested
having access to a list of everything that released in the past week that i can just pick through is priceless
glenn, please let your overlords know that service is about as important as any element i've run into on streaming

this is not the spotify thread. your glenn can't hear you here.

no spotify user that's spent hours and months sorting folders and playlists is going to be jumping at the chance the move for exactly the same service. Can you import folders and playlists?

but in a way it's good competition, because spotify will surely now have to invest more in features and s/w dev. it wasn't a good time for Spotify to remove all the much loved apps. They would've been a huge edge over TIDAL. Maybe TIDAL knew Spotify were currently at their weakest with lots of confused, annoyed users.

https://tidalsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201724441-How-do-I-import-playlists-from-Spotify-in-the-Web-Player-

i checked in sonos today and tidal is now listed - never noticed/seen it before.
along with loads of other streaming services that i have never heard of.
can there really be that enough scope for diversity in the market given that they all do much the same thing ?

https://tidalsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201724441-How-do-I-import-playlists-from-Spotify-in-the-Web-Player-

― And let’s say a new Hozier comes along, and Spotify outbids you (Sufjan Grafton)

I click the link and:

"oops.
The page you were looking for doesn't exist

You may have mistyped the address or the page may have moved."

Yeah, I think this is now a farce. They need to gt their shit together.

It's probably an old link. I'm not sure how playlist importing would work. Obviously, spotify playlist info can't be stored only server side. But I also don't know where it is.

What exactly is "Curated Editorial"?

Interviews, recommendations, features, playlists made by Beyoncé, etc.

Curated Editorial by the world's top Creatives.

Finally a way to read an interview with Beyonce.

http://read.tidal.com/

^Seems interesting if potentially self-serving.

can there really be that enough scope for diversity in the market given that they all do much the same thing ?

maybe the point is that they'll all have exclusives so you have to $ub$cribe to all of them

.. and therein lies the problem.

market fragmentation = end user disenchantment

This David Thomas interview kinda justifies Tidal's existence all by itself.

#TIDALforALL

Every movement throughout history began with a few individuals banding together with a vision, a vision.. a vision to change the status quo.

that interview is great

hahaha thomas is the best at being a crank

haha yes! that FAQ they mention is worth looking at too: http://www.ubuprojex.com/faqs/mostfaq.html

Lot of good Paste-like pieces there: Patterson Hood, Craig Finn, Jason Molina.

just sign up for free and put a cancellation reminder on your calendar.

You don't even need to do that. Turn around and cancel five minutes later and you're still good to go for the next 30 days.

good idea. did not think of that.

raise your hands if you are surprised: so far editorial appears to be all dudes except syndicated pieces from the talkhouse and one piece by Katarzyna Rogalska (maybe more, but I clicked like 30 articles and only found the one.) #tidalforall #unlessyoureawomaniguess

(Yeah, exactly. Good quality, bad diversification.)

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2015/04/17/breaking-tidal-fires-ceo-and-25-staff-members

Whoops

Welp, this isn't going well.

hah, whoever came up with the press conference idea/presentation I assume was first to go

The numbers don’t lie: Jay-Z’s Tidal music service is already a spectacular flop

Spotify surged back into the iPad top 40 download chart on March 31st, right when Tidal’s anti-Spotify invective hit its peak in American media. This had not happened since November 2014.

It looks like Tidal’s attacks on Spotify and Pandora actually managed to increase public awareness of the services, boosting Spotify’s download performance in particular at the end of March.

http://media.giphy.com/media/MG7Ox4h7r2riU/giphy.gif

Kinda funny bt not that unusual a situation tbh

picard.jpg

lololol free jay-z endorsement for spotify

The new CEO Peter Tonstad, a former consultant for the Norwegian Ministry of Environment, has his work cut out for him.

if businessweek don't call their profile piece 'meet the cnut trying to turn tidal around' then i will sincerely be questioning their standards in journalism

can't help but feel like jay-z hopped into this game more or less b/c apple's beats buyout saw dre leapfrogging him as world's most paid rapper, so i do feel a bit bad for him that it's only widening the gap

i didn't care much for Spotify's head honcho's tone in his tweets to Geoff Barrow and Tom Mcrae last week about crap revenue from streams

Daniel Ek @eldsjal · Apr 16

@tommcrae you seem to be confused about how our model works. Have you even visited http://Spotifyartists.com ?

it's the 'even..' in that sentence that irks me.

his tone has always been patronising x twee iirc

lol as though it's geoff's/tom's responsibility to discover and research spotify's official literature

Business Insider posted the following statement from TIDAL:

“TIDAL’s new interum (sic) CEO is Peter Tonstad

lol as though it's geoff's/tom's responsibility to discover and research spotify's official literature

Well it's not, but it's also not Spotify's responsibility. They should be nagging their label about it all.

Kanye's bailed.

has this failed yet

The day it launched

sad times for anyone claiming it was being run by the Illuminati.

oh come on it was SUPPOSED to fail. it's all a carefully managed show.

the clues are in the names:

spotify=i oft spy=gov't surveillance

pandora=a box of secrets you don't want to open

tidal=the tsunami caused by the meteor that the illuminati are using rockets to summon to earth and destroy all life except for the elites who will be relaxing in a bunker with eargasm-inducing streaming audio pumping into their headphones while the rest of us drown

those clues are too good. no conspiracy theorist could ever clue so good.

"celebs, fighting for the chance for you to pay twice as much" is just a horrible optic

the add with them all sitting around the table conspiring like the Legion of Doom is incredible

ad

the whole thing was like the opposite of We Are The World

http://stagedoor.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Tidal-main-artist-image.jpg

We can't go on
Pretending day by day
That someone, somehow will soon make a change
We are all a part of
God's great big family
And a better royalty rate is all we need

l-r
Rawhide
Gothman
Robotwins
Storm
Goldigger
Solomon Grundy

lady on the far right gets a pass I give up

i knew it was a bad omen when they lined up a lot of the most recognizable stars in music for a press conference and somehow each and every one of them looked uncharacteristically terrible

soyrev OTM: "can't help but feel like jay-z hopped into this game more or less b/c apple's beats buyout saw dre leapfrogging him as world's most paid rapper"

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/22/jay-z-beyonce-album-tidal

Rap game Long Road Out of Eden.

the thing is that any EXCLUSIVE will not be exclusive for long; unless you have a considerable body of content, putting up a paywall doesn't keep your content in, it keeps your listeners out. Five albums won't save tidal; a year of exclusive genre wide content might but it's hard to view this as a "plan" so much as a series of increasingly desperate moves

Give Jay a two-hourly weekly Bob Dylan Radio Hour type show where there's interaction only with Tidal members. #ArmchairLefsetz

They should have announced some exclusive albums at the press conference - "a new Beyonce album" is way more plausible an incentive for 100k+ people to change streaming services than "FLAC"

Let alone "the opportunity to give jack white - or rather his label - a better royalty"

i confess i've never understood what a 'writeoff' is exactly, is it possible this is all one big 'writeoff'

A write off are expenses you net against income on taxes. You have to make income to write off a debt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upifaeK0B5U

^ yeah that not what croup said that doesn't sound right at all

lol @ "Storm"

I like Tidal. Decent editorial + the possibility of audio upgrade can't really be a bad thing. And paying for music makes sense to me. The roll out was a disaster though.

In terms of higher definition audio, i'd rather see more back catalogue sold in wav/aif/flac/alac etc. And if it's 16 bit 44.1 it shouldn't be a higher price than new cds either!

feel like they should have marketed quietly to the high-end audiophile wanker market first, let it build its luxe cachet naturally rather than presenting its high-end status as a fait accompli just by the presence of megastars. not that that'd make it a better deal but it might've fooled a few more people

i don't imagine this is a priority but i'm still waiting for a streaming service to include unofficial music like mixtapes, dj mixes and so on; i expect it might be a bit of a headache but surely not beyond the ken of these business geniuses

I'm gladly paying to NOT have to deal with organizing my music files daily. That stuff exhausts me. I definitely need the possibility to buy music too but most of the time I'm fine with not downloading a lot of random stuff.

Yeah, I've thought that too, Lex. First service to buy up datpiff and integrate it seamlessly wins this. It'll take some paperwork but it'll be worth it. My main issue with all of these is the huge amount of (mostly available) music missing.

maybe it's the name. does sound like a washing powder.

spotify is a pretty dumb name too tbf, ditto the majority of apps/sites that have taken off

Maybe some sort of open-source decentralised (and as uncorporate as possible) p2p thing where streaming is a cheap sub but you can pay extra for download/high-quality options and the only 'seeds' are actual verified artists and labels who get almost all of the customer cash. #ridicbusinessmodels

i don't imagine this is a priority but i'm still waiting for a streaming service to include unofficial music like mixtapes, dj mixes and so on; i expect it might be a bit of a headache but surely not beyond the ken of these business geniuses

― lex pretend,

Isnt this soundcloud?

Soundcloud iphone app has been horribly laggy for me recently

soundcloud doesn't pay artists at all IIRC

i don't imagine this is a priority but i'm still waiting for a streaming service to include unofficial music like mixtapes, dj mixes and so on; i expect it might be a bit of a headache but surely not beyond the ken of these business geniuses

― lex pretend, Thursday, April 23, 2015 7:52 AM (2 days ago)

Spotify does. And any artist can make a playlist mix if they want to. Avey Tare did one last year that was awesome.

Yeah Ministry of Sound got quite huffy because people were making their own playlists with tracklistings from MIS compilations.

Jay Z accuses rivals of ‘smear campaign’ against Tidal http://pagesix.com/2015/04/26/jay-z-accuses-rivals-of-smear-campaign-against-tidal/?_ga=1.254190283.250836245.1430091415

“The iTunes Store wasn’t built in a day,” he said. “It took Spotify nine years to be successful.”

Jay Z said that 770,000 subscribers have signed up, “Tidal is doing just fine. We have over 770,000 subs . We have been in business less than one month.”

He added, “We are here for the long haul. Please give us a chance to grow and get better.”

“We are human (even Daft Punk ha). We aren’t perfect – but we are determined.”

"We aren't perfect" feels like such a weird thing for Jay-Z to say.

that said if they really have over 770+k subs, with no free tier, in less than a month that ain't awful

They gave away a month for free for signing up. So...

Yeah, we'll see how many subscribers they have in another 30 days.

haha oh man i didn't know that, lol

god win butler in that pic that dc posted depresses me, dude must be going through his midlife crisis a decade early

They gave away a month for free for signing up. So...

plus, tidal existed before jay z bought it and relaunched it. would be interested to know how that breaks down between new subs and inherited subs.

at least 500,000 of those tidal subscribers were onboard before jay z arrived, per [

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/business/media/jay-z-counters-reports-of-struggles-at-tidal-music-streaming-service.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

"per new york times," that sentence was supposed to end.

missed that jay-z claimed there was a million-dolar smear campaign. are other people lol'ing at the press event getting checks?

every time you smear, or lol at, tidal on twitter, spotify sends you a check for .0000018 cents.

nice

but if you smear or lol at Spotify on Twitter, Tidal sends you a check for .0000036 cents!

ha!

and if you smear or lol at both Spotify and Tidal on Twitter, you get to go on tour in support of your tweet

Tidal marketing itself as an exclusive video platform makes way more sense than bullshit audiophile reasons

Jack: TIDAL is going to help a lot of artists out. I'm talking about the punk band that has 50k hits on Youtube and doesn't see a dime.

LOL Jack White trying to help all those unknown punk bands who want to earn a living from youtube videos.

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

Got 5 out of 6.

trick question, none of the neil young samples evidence any sort of quality at all

5/6, missed the Jay-Z one

I missed the Neil one.

I got 1

Had a tough time telling any of them apart tbh.

I nailed the 320 mp3 EVERY TIME. Except that I considered this version to sound the best. Hmmm.

I always picked 320 .mp3, too. Perhaps because this is the dominant format in my own collection.

I find it next to impossible to distinguish between 320 .mp3 and .wav unless there's a lot of sibilant cymbals or high end guitar distortion harmonics. I could tell the difference between 320 .mp3 and .wav on Loveless, I think.

The best test audio isn't music at all, but more natural sounds like raindrops on tin roofs. Here, with so many frequencies represented, the compression algorithms constantly change which frequencies they choose to encode as representative, which yields strange muffling/"breathing" artifacts. Musical recordings are both much more harmonically simple, and most has accepted conventions for dynamic compression so that we can't immediately distinquish that it sounds off.

...most recordings have accepted conventions...

I went 5 for 6 mostly listening for sibilance, but it wasn't easy. It does go to show how good mp3 compression is, especially on non-HQ devices. There's a reason the format is so ubiquitous now.

shital

Good piece:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/3/8714231/jay-z-tidal-music-streaming-fail-succeed

I always picked 320 .mp3, too. Perhaps because this is the dominant format in my own collection.

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.

got 6 out of 6 by picking randomly since I couldn't hear any difference

CEO bails after 2 months

http://www.nme.com/news/jay-z/86413

I'll never get tired of laughing at Tidal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQXqkiKXiHc

Among all the job cuts and exec departures, Tidal's been caught up in the feud between Lil Wayne and Cash Music. But hopefully no one else will have their tour bus shot up.. Holy shit :o

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/birdman-is-suing-jay-z-and-tidal-for-50-million-for-streaming-lil-waynes-mixtape-2015-7

Also (not sure if mentioned elsewhere), Prince might try to save Tidal maybe.

*Cash Money lol

http://pitchfork.com/news/60515-prince-to-release-new-album-hitnrun-via-tidal/

this is still a thing?

Tidal or Prince?

Prince of Tidals mirit

I still use Tidal quite a bit. Apple Music is cluttered and noisy, google music is good for uploads but not curated at all. Tidal fits inbetween. It's where I go when I know what I want to listen to. I feel like a perv paying for three subscriptions though.

This playlist is decent: Searching For a Truer Sound: No Depression & Beyond

There's another one I can't find an online link to that's pretty decent called "Laurel Canyon Classics" - soft rock, singersongwriter, country rock

Best possible publicity for Tidal at this point:

http://pagesix.com/2015/08/28/tidal-faces-20m-lawsuit-over-drakes-apple-music-deal/?_ga=1.153910584.1414958259.1440893908

holy moly

paczkowski says no: http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnpaczkowski/apple-did-not-stop-tidal-from-streaming-drakes-set-at-lil-we

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dKSr32pkTM
i know he forgets that he owns tidal but why is this a rhapsody ad

Because it's from 2014 (or possibly earlier).

oh yeah? that's what i get for not watching it all the way thru. carry on.

two months apparently what it took to reset me to thinking this was about fiona apple

rhapsody commercial is from 2009.

in other news, my friend works at Tidal. I've been kind of ribbing her about it, and she was psyched to show me the interface and prove me wrong. she forces me to sign up for a 3 month trial. we finally pull it up, and it won't even play one song. error messages galore.

I know GhostTunes is Garth Brooks's pet digital retail product, but the fact there are no news results on Google that aren't a year old and his equally year-old album is still the big splash on the front page makes me think it didn't go over really well. lol

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/whos-winning-the-new-streaming-wars.html

The music streaming wars have become a touchy subject as all the major players are trying to get a leg up in the battle. Apple Music, launched in June, hit out at reports in mid-August that users were giving up on the service before their three-month free trial had finished.
The study from MusicWatch had claimed that 48 percent of people had ditched the service, which Apple has wholeheartedly refuted.

-

giving up the service *before* the free trial had finished..

in other news, my friend works at Tidal. I've been kind of ribbing her about it, and she was psyched to show me the interface and prove me wrong. she forces me to sign up for a 3 month trial. we finally pull it up, and it won't even play one song. error messages galore.

Don't leave us hanging, what was her reaction to that?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51169MpylNL.jpg

Ah balls, wrong thread. SORRY.

I was about to say, a cryptic reaction.

thought this was a really sharp piece on tidal/spotify/our brave new streaming future etc

http://www.stereogum.com/1848677/streaming-war-pigs-apple-tidal-spotify-the-year-in-music-services/franchises/2015-in-review/

Good read indeed - guy is a good writer, believe he also does the regular metal and pop columns

so many true statements in that article it's like bizarro lefsetz

did anyone else get the thing where they were incorrectly billed by Tidal and then given a refund and 3 free months as recompense? I'm wondering how widespread this was.

anyway, I guess I'll mess around with Tidal again.

Finally redeemed my trial subscription for the same reason everybody else has. What a mess. Really miserable interface, lots of errors and bugs.

on Android, I prefer the UI to Spotify. queue management in particular is a lot easier. I also haven't had any issues with streaming lately.

if the catalog caught up, I'd seriously consider dropping Spotify for Tidal, but evey week I run into things that are missing. for example, the CFCF album that came out on Friday is on Spotify and is not on Tidal. outside of the Rihanna and Kanye albums, I can't think of any gaps I've found that run the other direction.

so it goes http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/31/jay-z-tidal-owners-schibsted-verdane?CMP=share_btn_fb

Welp

I finally signed up for the free 30 day trial so I could indulge in some Prince nostalgia, and the sound quality is so much crazily better than Spotify that I don't really know what to say. I may end up keeping them both. The weird ILM anti-Tidal bias (actually it's not that weird) had kept me away until now. Kind of hoping that Jay Z will discover a love for death metal and Julianna Hatfield, join ILM, start multiple handy and helpful playlist threads that happen (for no particular reason) to be Tidal-based, and then we can all be friends.

Do you have Spotify set to the highest bitrate (320)?

Yes. I've also set my bitrate to Julianna Hatfield and Donny Darko, but it doesn't seem to be helping.

i've been using tidal since kanye and it's very easily the best streaming all imo, and i say that as a multi-year spotify subscriber

i think the celebrities behind tidal have done a terrible job of marketing it. part of it is just the problem of people like kanye and jay-z being the ones saying "give more money back to the artists"--they're right, but they are terrible poster boys for needy musicians.

But will Jay Z handle the statistical analysis for my humble village's Padgenjop [species of Swedish fish] poll in 2016? If not, I fear I must return to Spotify full-time...

It is true that famous black musicians are much worse spokespeople for a music service than anonymous white businessmen, some of whom we might be friends with.

you got me!

i mean, that's not entirely untrue? the press has an anti-artist, pro-business slant and has for a while.

i guess i don't know enough about "the press" -- that seems like a very broad generalization to make. do you mean the music press? newspapers? blogs?

Tidal really is a lot better now. I just transferred my huge 1450 track 2016 playlist from Spotify to Tidal using Soundiiz and it found 1324 of the tracks - way more than I expected. With some additional detective work I located about 50 more and the 50 or so that are left are mostly pretty obscure.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the Tidal app (which I only downloaded for Beyonce), but I'm not entirely convinced by the whole proposition yet. Now I use Sonos for most of my listening I'm not really arsed which service I use, but I've got too many Spotify playlists to give them up easily.

I'd never heard of Soundiiz before though, sounds intriguing.

What about the whole proposition rubs you the wrong way, Matt?
I miss the notifications and the ability to pick up tracks from friends' playlists and also the stats from Spotify. The sound is better though and that does mean something. As does the argument about economy.

My main objection was always that they just didn't have the stuff I was looking for though, and this seems to be changing. There's still a bit of afropop and dancehall missing but not enough that I can really complain about it anymore.

Yeah the size of the catalogue was my whole issue, also ease of playlist porting, but if this is all changing then I'm open to making a switch. There has to be a compelling reason to do so though and the only one I can think of is Spotify's dodgy search and endless spinning circles if it's not in the mood.

does that even happen on paid spotify?! i literally only ever open spotify to make playlists for other ppl and i hate every moment i'm in it bc of the spinning circles, freezes, intrusive ads on the screen etc, but i thought that was just a drawback of the free version

It happen infrequently but it's annoying when it does. The Sonos app has no such issues.

Realistically, Tidal has much better (and noticeably so) sound. Spotify has a better catalog, especially when it comes to the obscure stuff. The interfaces strike me as very similar. Tidal doesn't have a fairly high-level executive supplying playlists to ILM, which is a drawback (unless you consider being urged to listen to Baby Metal a drawback itself, in which case things get complicated). My solution at the moment was to drop Netflix and subscribe to Tidal in addition to Spotify. I might go to free Spotify in the near future.

i don't think glenn is a 'high level executive'

Who is this glenn of whom you speak? I only know one glenn (with a small g) and he runs a small mom & pop store that sells herring or something. Some random blog called Vice did an article on him a while ago, I think about whether he preferred dill or mustard on his herring?

Tidal has better sound even on the standard subscription? Because the 'hi-fi' one is a bit pricey for me

What is hi-fi Tidal, $19.99 a month? So two hours a month working at your job at McDonalds. Spotify is only one hour a month flipping burgers, and that other $9.98 is completely essential to feed your wife and children. So yeah, forget I ever brought it up, Spotify all the way. At the end of the year, you'll have an extra $120 or so, which makes a nice down-payment for a house in Bushwick. And now that I think of it, back in the 90s when I was just out of college, they actually *paid* you to take CDs home from the store.

fuck off?

Ok, but it'll cost you $9.99.

Tidal's Premium option is at $9.99 and the sound quality is superior to Spotify's. I ran a check and the difference is noticeable. It pains me to say this, because I was starting to think of Spotify as my new home. They even hava a student discount, I think. And with more obscure stuff pouring into Tidal, they're suddenly in the game again.

Spotify's UI and stats and things are still more awesome than the competition's though, so I'm not quitting it yet.

They = tidal, hava = have

To be fair, what I saw was $19.99 for Tidal Premium. Maybe they have better deals out there.

hmmm, saying Spotify's UI and stats are 'awesome' sure gives me pause on tidal. i always encounter bugs and weird quirks, especially on the mobile version. and i always thought they could have beefed up the social element, maybe incorporate a last.fm-type service within it. anyway, installing my trial tidal subscription now. i sent a calendar alert to be sure to cancel either one in a few weeks, though, because i work at mcdonald's

For the social side of things, I really think Tidal should have someone in the company posting playlists on ILM on a regular basis, so that is in fact a major mistake. I think minimum wage at McDonalds is about to go up to $15, so it gets better.

this thread sure is salty

Hi Ulysses. Are you the ILM poster who keeps the Spotify playlists updated. I sometimes have trouble keeping people's names straight.

xpost
This says 9.99: http://tidal.com/us/try-now

And I'm not saying Spotify is perfect, I get weird offline messages on my phone too, and the notifications only work at times, but the simple ways you can access other users' playlists to keep up to date, easily recommend stuff to others and also the very useful new releases things that glenn and others are doing make it a must have for me.

So just to keep things honest, $9.99 isn't for the hi-fi version. It's $19.99 for that.

xp I am the ILX poster who keeps the Spotify playlists updated. It's an immensely dumb enterprise but it's helpful for me to hear more music.

We're lucky to have people like you and glenn keeping our Spotify playlists updated!

Yes the hifi option is more expensive but I'm saying that unless you actually NEED the hifi version the premium version is the same price as the competitors and has better sound than them. Is that hard to understand or are you just trying to pick a fight?

I think you should probably reread this thread from where I came in. Shorter answer=no.

xp you're welcome dlp9001, though glenn doesn't have anything to do with that project.

I'm also unconvinced that it's a good idea to move everything over to a service that's quite likely to fold when its celebrity backers decide they've burned quite enough cash on it.

It's not gonna fold, I think. If anything it'll get bought and swallowed up by a bigger company who are interested in retaining the hifi subscribers with $20 a month to spend.

Depends on how many there are.

I think there's definitely a market for hifi streaming - the world is full of people with high end stereos and streaming isn't going to go away. The big question has always been how you market it and Tidal hasn't quite cracked that one yet?

re the press: look at the way business is covered by the american media, from npr to the new york post. just the simple act of saying 'the dow is up' as a good thing shows a subjective slant toward one view of capitalism. the tech press is more explicitly anti-artist (you don't have to look far to find pieces in which they kick and scream about wanting music for free while being wholly unquestioning of idiotic assertions by founders and engineers) but american culture has a strong anti-artist streak in it.

Does tidal have decent classical and film score library?

I couldn't tell you but if there's anything in particular you're looking for I'll be happy to check. What I will say though i that classical music is one are where you actually need hi-fi, the 320 versions just don't cut it. Tidal also has credits/liner notes for a lot of their tracks - that's definitely a plus too.

*are = area, lol

You can search albums & artists on Tidal to see if they want you want:

http://listen.tidal.com/

*have

my trouble is that i don't have a setup where i can stream music to my stereo... the only "venue" i have for streaming is my laptop and its shitty little speakers. so there's not a lot of value in a "hi-fi" streaming experience, for the moment.

that said, if i buy FLAC files (or even 320 MP3s) from Bandcamp or whatever, I will sometimes burn them to a CD (I know, so 20th century) and play them through my stereo. does tidal offer that option, or is it exclusively a streaming service??

I'm also unconvinced that it's a good idea to move everything over to a service that's quite likely to fold when its celebrity backers decide they've burned quite enough cash on it.

this is precisely why i'm still in favor of buying music on iTunes (or more often, CD/vinyl); I don't trust that these sites will really be around, or be around in their present form, for all that long. or that the music i most want to listen to will still be available from them in a year or two years.

I'm pretty sure Tidal has no way to burn unless there's some weird complicated workaround, though if you have a smartphone it's easy enough to hook it up to your stereo and stream that way. Or hook up laptop to stereo, unless your stereo has no way to input from a laptop, which would be kind of weird. I tend to agree: there are a (very) few albums that I'm worried won't be on streaming services at some point, and I sometimes buy those if they're important to me. But that's a vanishingly small number of records. I'm pretty sure that at this point buying music in case streaming services end is along the same lines as buying survival rations in case civilization ends, but I could be wrong.

i'm pretty sure that's what happened to the etruscans but bear in mind i'm a product of the american public school system

That's why I convert all my albums to linear b.

also just to state the even more obvious: everything that is available on streaming and plenty that's not is readily accessible on darkweb and has been since well before streaming started so that's always gonna serve as the emergency kitchen in my house. But I'm happy to pay a service charge if you can get it to me in neat containers!

i use torrent sites to download stuff like japanese cassette-only releases from 1982. but i avoid using them to DL anything i can reasonably buy.

also, i have a kind of old-fashioned sense that if i'm going to pay for something, i want it in tangible form. i don't like the idea of spending thousands of dollars assembling a music "collection" that could be wiped out if i spill orange juice on my hard drive. (yes, i know, backups, but i never feel too secure even with those.)

On some level I sympathize with survivalists, but at the end of the day I trust that I'll wake up tomorrow and still be able to go to a store and buy matches.

i've lost at least one big digital music collection and one that was comprised of physical media; it happens. i'll lose my mind when i inevitably lose the next one but hey everything goes away in time

Yes. I lost a huge collection of vinyl due to a flood, but somehow I still manage to live day by day. I'm a huge music fan, but realistically the number of albums that I've lost that I can't replace is less than 10, probably much less. I'm sure there are people with extremely niche interests where that's not the case, but they know who they are and know what to do.

xpost

yeah in general i'm torn between being terrified that i'll lose all the stuff i've amassed and wishing i would lose all the stuff i've amassed. but that seems like another thread topic entirely. :)

FWIW i have a lot of vinyl -- african albums, mostly -- that would be extremely difficult and even more expensive to replace. in most cases they're things i lucked out finding for cheap -- one-in-a-million finds. so i'd be upset to lose them. but in a more existential sense i'm sure i'd be fine w/o them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwEbYCN0dKc

as the son of a record dealer, i know from that which is truly irreplaceable and i feel you especially on the african LPs where you certainly aren't going to find the original again.
the curatorial or collector approach is something i am desperate to get away from and never will.

but streaming is a nice sort of methadone.

that said, if i buy FLAC files (or even 320 MP3s) from Bandcamp or whatever, I will sometimes burn them to a CD (I know, so 20th century) and play them through my stereo. does tidal offer that option, or is it exclusively a streaming service??

grampateurist

idg the anxiety re 'what if the streaming service i shackle myself to folds' streaming subscrips are renewed on a monthly basis and all the music is searchable?

Well, in part it's a rejection of the idea that the record industry wants you to 'rent' music from them, never own it.

Personally, I try to buy a physical copy of everything I feel is worth having long-term and use streaming for try-before-I-buy or for accessing things that are nice to hear but won't get repeat listens.

Burning files to CDRs is silly, though, as those things will die on you sooner than you think.

It's probably an overblown fear of streaming suddenly disappearing entirely, though. Too much money is already being generated by it.

You can still own music though. What I'm paying for is the easy access to just about everything everywhere - and that's worth the price. Keeping up with a large amount of music used to cost an enormous amount of money,and a bit of frustration when you ended up buying a lot of stuff you didn't really listen to or even like, just to keep up. Then when pirating began it took a humongous amount of time just to find the right links, worry about internet stuff and, last but not least, managing all the digital files, mostly through itunes and i don't know how many external drives. Tidal/Spotify/Apple basically remove a lot of the negative energy that came with being into music.

Another thing that is making me reconsider Tidal is that it seems as if they've loosened the screws a bit on playing from several different devices at once. Family plans are fine to an extent, but since there's an age cap on who can actually join them they've not been helpful. I have two kids below the age limit and they've both got their ipads and they both sometimes listen to music on them. With the Spotify set up, and Tidal until recently I think, you could only play on one device at a time, understandably from a business perspective, but infuriating when you have two kids who want to listen to different music in their rooms at once. Google Play had this one correct - one account should give you the possibility to stream where you liken and how you like, at least until you stream so much that your monthly fee isn't covering the royalties anymore, and I get the impression that you need to do a lot of streaming for that to happen. But it seems like Tidal is moving in that direction too now, even if they're not advertising it, and that makes me very happy.

Overall, does Spotify still have more music than Tidal?

Well, a bit but not much. Maybe 5% more - down from about 20 just a year ago? When I transferred my huge playlist Sugarboy's Hola Hola was the only song it missed that I'd consider unmissable, most of the others were from really obscure compilations. Plus, I got to add a few Beyoncé tracks.

the premium version is the same price as the competitors and has better sound than them.

Spotify and Tidal high quality are both 320kbps so how do you suppose Tidal conjures up this better quality?

Spotify uses 3 quality ratings for streaming, all in the Ogg Vorbis format.

Hmm maybe it's all in the Ogg Vorbis (or lack of). I very much doubt I would be able to hear any difference though, no comment on anyone else's fine discernment.

I'm usually terrible at discerning stuff like this but there's a notable difference in both the desktop and iphone versions. The spotify versions sound muddier. I couldn't tell you the reason though.

well none of these services have Aaliyah S/T

tidal hi fi sounds much clearer than spotify to me

Well the hi fi should sound clearer. The mystery is why the Premium sounds clearer too.

Is it Pono-quality?

I have no idea, lol.

v much enjoying beyonce, prince, and new radiohead. but already had to uninstall/install android app again to get a track to work.

I perceive a difference in sound when A/Bing Tidal and Spotify, but it seems like it may just be a difference in volume, which would be a very scammy thing for Tidal to do. That is some Circuit City speaker salesman level bullshit.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5f/34/2b/5f342b4222a1660715259397de5a237b.jpg

some appear to detect tidal using a built in EQ. Which also seems pretty scammy. If I were an artist, I wouldn't want a default EQ to be applied to my music. Then again, maybe it is done by the publishing company on purpose to make music sound better on laptop speakers or something.

"tidal? ENHANCE"

is there a graphic equalizer like there is on Spotify? as in.. can the TIDAL 'EQ'ing be turned off/altered? if not then yeah that's a scandal! surely can't be right can it?

I tried to find an EQ in the android app, but I don't see one.

On that same app, I've listened to fewer than 10 albums and I've had to reinstall the app because Beyonce's "Hold Up" and Radiohead's "Tinker Tailor Tidal Sucks" won't play until I delete and reinstall the app. These songs were supposed to be downloaded to my phone. Thanks, Thom, Prince, and Bey!

xxp I've also been searching for a Tidal/Apple/Spotify comparison that includes measurements, but I can't find one. It's all CNET-level hand wavy codec sum-it-ups. But I think that many people agree that there's an audible difference, and that difference, which Tidal would have you believe is Lossy/lossless/bitrate/codec/etc-based, does not fit with previous experience of A/Bing bitrates and codecs. Then again, I think Pono was doing something similarly scammy, no?

Free trial is almost up and so far the lack of gapless playback between tracks is the dealbreaker.

I've been told that when playing vinyl records you have to physically turn them over after playing side a. That's insane. I'm switching to 8-track.

Also, I cannot find an article that scientifically proves that Tidal sounds better than Spotify. I'm extremely worried about being tricked into thinking that I like the way Tidal sounds, when in fact I actually like Spotify better but just don't realize this. I have a month to compare the two services, but what I really need is a peer-approved scientific journal article to tell me which one actually sounds better. There's a lot at stake here. With a $10/month difference between the two services, we're talking about my ability to retire at 65 vs. having to work in a coal mine for the rest of my life.

Please help, ILM.

There's no difference in cost for me since I pay $10/month for spotify as well. Using EQ or loudness to scam people into hearing a difference in your music streaming service would indeed involve some ethical stakes. And in the case of EQ, there's the question of whether you're hearing the music as the artist intended.

Here, this can help:
http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

Thanks, Eazy. That is a good test. But the point is that I typically would fail bitrate A/B tests, whereas the difference between Tidal and other services seems to be more pronounced. So one wonders if Tidal is doing something more to make the difference between their audio and other services' more obvious.

I'm extremely worried about being tricked into thinking that I like the way Tidal sounds, when in fact I actually like Spotify better but just don't realize this

also, if it was just EQ and you could find out the frequency response curve of the EQ, you could potentially get Spotify to sound like Tidal if you do indeed like Tidal's sound but also prefer Spotify's software.

I've been told that when playing vinyl records you have to physically turn them over after playing side a. That's insane. I'm switching to 8-track.

I do agree that it's a bit much to complain about flipping vinyl records, though! For the record, I never did, and that was happening over in the moon shaped pool thread.

I'm talking about their hi-fi version, where the difference is insanely apparent.

Also, if service A sounds much better than service B, I'm not sure why one would spend a lot of time wondering about possible evil or deceptive reasons for this. Either find a way to tweak service B so it sounds as good as service A, decide that you don't care, or subscribe to service B at the life-changing extra cost of $120/year. I don't really see that this requires a doctoral thesis on the human sound-pereception system. Surely 30 days is enough time to figure it all out?

I've already explained why. I've also noted your particularly incurious position, cowboy, but I'll add that $120/year could mean more to some than it does to others. Pretty sure this has also already been said to you by others, though, so it may be hopeless.

Arguments like this strike me as so bizarre. You have two music services, both offering a free trial. You know what they cost, and you can spend 30 days deciding which one you like better. The difference in cost is equal to about 16 hours of work at minimum wage annually. And yet we somehow need to have other people (Science!) confirm which one is better, because we might be being tricked. No reasonable person talks like this when the subject is toilet paper.

board ain't called "I Love Toilet Paper"

Let's Anticipate The Charmin 3-Ply

lol

I definitely tend to overthink these things, but I definitely feel like I'm always being tricked when it comes to audio quality. I basically don't trust myself when doing A/B tests because a simple think like A being louder than B will fool me into thinking A is better. At the same time I do want the best audio quality, because while the differences can be subtle, they are there and definitely affect your enjoyment.

It's like when you upgrade to slightly better headphones. You don't immediately notice much of a difference necessarily, but at some point you listen to some random song you've listened to many times before and you notice some element in the music that you never noticed before and all of a sudden this song is a lot better than it used to be.

Anyway, this is why I wish there was some kind of scientific research that proves that A is better than B rather than relying on a bunch of random internet people or even worse my own senses.

I don't really trust myself to reliably evaluate the quality of anything that is perceived by my senses.

so if A was provably better but you didn't enjoy it as much as B, you would still choose A?

if you go to a party at Todd Glass' house, you might think that a live drummer playing along to recorded music with a bunch of reverb added sounds good to you at first. It'd be reasonable to worry that you aren't like Todd Glass, and you won't enjoy this particular sound all of the time and for all types of music.

so if A was provably better but you didn't enjoy it as much as B, you would still choose A?

I guess it's a matter of how much more I enjoy B, but there's no good way to measure enjoyment. So I don't know.

if enjoyment is all you want out of it, you should choose B

But you might like some other aspect of A better and wonder if some cheap trick is being applied in B that's preventing you from having what you like about both A and B using A.

or you might wonder if B is the kind of company that sells snake oil and is therefore taking $ without adding value. if company A has proven to add value, you might wonder if A could add even more value if it had B's $.

exactly

also just because I like B more now doesn't mean B is better, maybe there are some less evident aspects that make A better that only become more noticeable after repeated listens

and even if the above weren't true, you might ask for measurements about A and B because you don't treat all aspects of your consuming life (especially art, not toilet paper!) as a string of Pepsi challenges.

to be clear, "b" is penis and "a" is vagina? or vice versa?

to be clear, "a" is my penis and "b" is your penis and I am Mickey Avalon

aaaaand back to it:

16 hours of work at minimum wage annually

And yet we somehow need to have other people (Science!) confirm which one is better, because we might be being tricked.

Here's a crazy idea: spend a month listening to both services for free, decide which one you like better based on your own experience, decide whether the cost difference (which is about $120/year, or one cup of coffee at someplace that isn't Starbucks every three days) is worth it to you, act accordingly. Ulysses (cough guy who manages the Spotify lists on ILM cough): I think A is Tidal and B is Spotify. Maybe glenn can weigh in on which is better, so we get some more unbiased information.

ok ok I don't think I listen to music for much other than enjoyment but you guys obviously have more refined expectations

also just because I like B more now doesn't mean B is better, maybe there are some less evident aspects that make A better that only become more noticeable after repeated listens

moving the goalposts a bit but yeah I'm with you on this hypothetical - the longer-term enjoyment may not be scientific or provable either though

this is the most frustrating post-croup ilx experience

Ulysses (cough guy who manages the Spotify lists on ILM cough

It's not as though he's making any money from this; you make him sound like some embedded corporate flack

I'm not sure that's how I make him sound. I actually think I make him sound like the guy on ILM who manages the Spotify playlists. He recently changed his screen name, so it's possible that not everyone knows who he is. I know that I found it confusing.

i picture you with a cigarette holder, if that helps

Kettlebell, but close. I picture you as a nice guy who likes updating Spotify playlists on ILM.

I do not work for a music streaming service. I don't even work in software. I'm just a guy that wants to find out if he bought snake oil this month.

"here's an idea: rub that snake oil into your temples. see if it makes you feel better. it's only 24 BK croissan'wiches a year."

"Do you need somebody else (Science!) to tell you what feels good?"

Here's an idea: listen to music via two different delivery methods and see which one you like better. This is really a pretty insane thread.

if enjoyment is all you want out of it, you should choose B

― Sufjan Grafton, Wednesday, May 11, 2016 2:24 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But you might like some other aspect of A better and wonder if some cheap trick is being applied in B that's preventing you from having what you like about both A and B using A.

― Sufjan Grafton, Wednesday, May 11, 2016 2:26 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or you might wonder if B is the kind of company that sells snake oil and is therefore taking $ without adding value. if company A has proven to add value, you might wonder if A could add even more value if it had B's $.

― Sufjan Grafton, Wednesday, May 11, 2016 2:27 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how the heck do you smoke out of a kettlebell?

very carefully!

don't know, but you listen to The Turkish Get Up Kids while you do it!

(testing out some punchlines. seeing which one feels good.)

exactly

also just because I like B more now doesn't mean B is better, maybe there are some less evident aspects that make A better that only become more noticeable after repeated listens

― silverfish, Wednesday, May 11, 2016 3:29 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I sympathize, becuz a bunch of the Amazing! Remasters! I bought in the early 2k's that i really dug now sound like crap to me since I learned to hear "squashed" sound.

Still, streaming services don't shackle themselves to you in perpetuity so...

I think it'd be really interesting to know if Tidal adds eq to their standard 320 stream! how can we find out...

this test is perhaps interesting to some, got 4/5 and most tracks I could pick out intuitively within seconds but not sure how valid the test is http://test.tidalhifi.com/

hmmm

I can quite easily pass the Tidal listening test 15/15, but I can't pass an ABX between a Tidal lossless test sample and that same file converted with dBPoweramp to mp3. So, I am able to convert from lossless to lossy with no discernible difference identified through ABX, but somehow Tidal is unable to do the same thing?

http://www.head-fi.org/t/770352/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality#post_11662420

welp i guess i'll finally try this fuckin thing tomorrow, howdy everyone!

Neil Young ‏@Neilyoung 9m9 minutes ago
EARTH mega-track "Love And Only Love"
premieres tomorrow, May13 on Tidal

oh, man

inertia keeps me w/ spotify; will it be neil who finally breaks me

i almost did for radiohead but then i bought it from their site
i got beyonce through other means and i don't really care enough about drake to bother

same, basically