Could this end lossless streaming? Apple, smartly, plays to the masses and not to niches.
Wall Street Journal: Apple in Talks to Acquire Jay Z’s Tidal Music Service
If this happens I fear it will be a hostile takeover with the intent to shut it down because of competitive ‘annoyance’.
I would certainly think it’ll kill MQA - but I’ll bet they’re after the library too. 45% of the users are on the higher bandwidth so I doubt Apple wants to kill that.
I don’t think it’s a buy-the-competition-to-kill-it movement.
I agree, while Apple wants to monopolize it also wants as big of a market it can garner.
Tidal is a streaming service which enjoys public recognition and acceptance, a swell as audiophile approval. Thus, Apple’s interest.
I imagine they would end of life the TIDAL brand and just fold it into iTunes. I just don’t see Apple messing with lossless since they have convinced the masses that lossy is just fine.
A interesting thought and a good point.
My guess is they will keep lossless for Tidal, or a iTune labled lossless stream, to capture this additional audiophile-lite market, as well as offer lossy AAC. If anything, Apple is good at marketing and could convince Apple fans that CD-quality is like HDTV and thus worth paying extra for.
Yet, as you point out, Apple has never been about actual quality but the perception of quality.
You have to keep in mind one critical rule in business:
You never offer something that will compete directly with a product that you have already invested heavily in to bring to market.
This is especially true with subscriber services made available over the internet.
So what do you think Apple is going to do with Tidal?
Elk said So what do you think Apple is going to do with Tidal?Hopefully nothing. Seems to be many close to this story that don't believe it has legs. We can only hope they are right. I agree with others that say this is only a play for artist catalog access. For those that Jay-Z is sharing this new revenue model with, I think they would be a bit miffed to become part of the Apple Music machine that many of them rejected. And if they do it because they will make money on the deal, then they are going to be seen as in it for themselves and that also runs in the face of the "support the artist" mantra.
In the end Jay-Z is a businessman, and a pretty savvy one at that. I’m watching closely.
MrDerrick said You have to keep in mind one critical rule in business:You never offer something that will compete directly with a product that you have already invested heavily in to bring to market.
This is especially true with subscriber services made available over the internet.
Exactly. Apple’s put a lot of effort into convincing customers lossy AAC is high quality.
What is unclear to me is which music library will be used - will they just fuse?
I would guess all tunes would origin from ONE library (i.e. iTunes servers)?
In this case the CD quality files don’t exist, but I have heard that the native tracks in iTunes are at least CD quality (?)
From the time of acquisition of Tidal by JZ and company, my personal thought was that all they really wanted to do was turn it over to make a fast buck.
Only the balance sheet can tell if they actually made and or are even making enough profit to satisfy the investors.
What would Apple be buying?
You can’t buy subscribers.
You can’t buy the artists.
The lifetime memberships are already bought and you can’t forecast future lifetime sales.
As for MQA, it would be doubtful that Apple would follow through.
I think that it is just idle talk about the acquisition to try to artificially boost the value of Tidal.
If MQA could help Tidal cut back on upload volume costs, that would save Tidal some money, but how many subscribers would be lost because they aren’t MQA ready and don’t care to spend to become MQA ready.