I had Qobuz and Tidal. I just canceled Tidal:
- I am more into classical music
- my new dac doesn’t do mqa
- Qobuz sounds better to me
I just hope that Qobuz survives because they face formidable competitors in Amazon and Apple.
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I can remember a few years ago, Country was numerous one. When streaming is factored in with purchases, hip hop/r&b is 50% more popular that second place rock. But, when only sales are considered, rock is three times more popular than hip hop/r&b. Interesting.
I’m jealous that your new dac doesn’t do MQA
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Yes but steaming is the way the majority of people in the world listen to music now. Times have changed.
Very interesting crystal ball. I’m not sure either will go away but maybe my crystal ball is cracked.
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I cannot claim to hear that Qobuz sounds “better”. Either my system or ears aren’t resolving enough. I’d love to sit down with someone in my room who hears the difference so they can point it out to me.
I still subscribe to both, but I prefer Qobuz because they are smaller, and I’ve listened to a few interviews with their founder/CEO/whatever, and they seem like a really cool company. 
So, I’ve been heavily favoring Qobuz over Tidal the past few months, but there is a batch converter to migrate Tidal playlists, albums and favorites to Qobuz. I might just try it, as I’ve read favorable reviews.
I would say Qobuz most definitely.
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Seems Tidal survives primarily thanks to Prince fans 
. Amazon is a force. When they came out with $12/ month HD streaming, Quboz reacted and matched it, though with a yearly subscription. Tidal remained at $20 per month. Now Amazon has gone to freaking $7.99, oy vey. Amazon has the advantage of owning the hosting servers. Quboz exists on Amazon servers.
MQA sort of briefly made sense when bandwidth prices were higher.
But we’ve written Tidal’s obituary many times. Didn’t the Twitter guy recently buy Tidal? Maybe Tidal doesn’t need to be profitable?
I like Quboz’s curated playlists better than Tidal’s.
Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Twitter and Square. Square recently purchased Tidal.
Somehow I missed this when it was recently announced, but the reason Amazon is offering high res for $7.99 is that Apple Music will offer 75 million tracks at CD quality, including some up to 24/48, all at no additional charge. And Spotify is bringing their high res tier soon. Not sure what this means for Tidal and Quboz, but it certainly must not be welcome.
Lucky for me I just paid my yearly Quboz fee 
I don’t think the changes with Spotify, Amazon and Apple have anything to do with Tidal and Qobuz nor will it impact either service.
The 99.9% that consume music via one of the big 3 are not aware of Tidal or Qobuz and likely never will be. 99.9% want to listen to music and have no particular interest in sound quality.
I prefer Qobuz to Tidal mostly because I don’t wish to willing support MQA, their sales tactics and technical falsehoods. I do believe and feel that Qobuz is easier on my brain but I can’t quantify it.
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I think if Spotify, Amazon and Apple become more audiophile friendly in terms of implementation, then there will be a mass exodus from Quboz/ Tidal due to far lower prices. I struggle to understand why the notoriously purity obsessed audiophile community subscribes to Tidal at all with their MQA shell games and nonsense.
I found this video interesting in how he explains the unfriendly to audiophile nature of the big 3…
Perhaps. How are they unfriendly now? Play any of them on your computer or phone and feed USB to your dac. With Spotify Connect its pretty seamless. I’m not sure what you mean they are not friendly to audiophiles. Roon is far too small for them to even likely be aware of let alone be interested in integration.
I think many of us may misinterpret why any of the 3 big players have streaming music at all. I don’t think it’s for the music or even for music listeners per se, let alone niche audiophiles, it’s for the usage metrics, the lifestyle choices, and ultimately the targeted ad revenue from the hundreds and hundreds of millions of subscribers/product purchasers. 50k audiophiles is simply not significant statistically.
Deezer is on the list but not Tidal nor Qobuz, as expected. I’m surprised Deezer has 7M.
These are just my thoughts, and a bit of data but mostly conjecture so as always take it for what it cost ya 
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The YouTube video I posted explains the technical reasons why the big 3 are not audiophile friendly. He explains it better than I am able. He explains how Amazon is completely clueless, and he hopes Apple will be more aware. Spotify is an unknown. I walked away from the video with a better understanding.
I’ve tried watching/listening to him in the past and have a hard time. He reminds me too much of a person that I really didn’t care for in my past…it’s my issue but I choose not to watch him.
@brett66 haha, he’s not my favorite, but I found that video interesting. It’s something about, using Apple as an example, how they handicap the bit rate due to their implementation. Same for Amazon. Quboz and Tidal do not do whatever ill that is… and are therefore more suitable for audiophiles…
Understood. Bandwidth still costs money and trimming bits is one way to save. Or at least this was a necessary tactic a few years ago. Hopefully a good master still shines through when a few bits are lopped off.
I still do enjoy my ripped CDs but having effectively unlimited access to so much music is awesome and overwhelming too. I know I won’t ever find all the music I could have liked.
This from 2013 - 4 million unplayed tracks on Spotify. I can only imagine with more and more catalogs being put online this number has gone way up since then but the listeners has gone up +44% from Q42019 to Q42020. More ears to find tracks but most probably let the algorithm choose the songs. Why not it can almost read your mind. The pandemic probably helped but many are probably hooked by now.
Here’s 2021 stats about Spotify. Fascinating percentages. Spotify by the Numbers: Subscribers, Artists and Music Statistics
Of note:
- The most Most Musical Day on Spotify so far was 11th November 2016
- Users spend an average of 17 hours listening to music on Spotify - I listen intently for ~90 mins. per day but play music for ~10 hours/d.
- About 52% of Spotify users listen to music on their phones - Occasionally podcast while out working with ear buds but rarely music
- 55% of users link their Facebook accounts to Spotify - I removed my FB account in 2013. I only used it for linking up with other like minded souls for spirited on and off road motorcycle trips.
- Users can access upcoming songs (and know what they’ve listened to) - I tried scribbling but didn’t find any value
- You can sync Spotify between Mac and iPhone to stay updated with your listening habits.
- Another place where I don’t fit the demo.
While the stereotyped audiophile age group (40-until death) may still have the most discretionary folding money we simply don’t have the shear numbers of the typical Spotify listener. These are the listeners that the others services are after.
I think the cost of bandwidth and the content delivery networks are so high performing that it really isn’t costing much of anything to change the bandwidth limiters to allow for CD-quality and the small number of 24/96+ to everyone. If they could make more revenue by passing along the costs they’d charge something for it.
When I started in enterprise computer networking in 1990 a 56 kilo bits per second internet circuit was ~$3000/month (if memory serves). A high-quality phone call codec uses more at 64kbps today.
In 2021 the same organization 25 years later this July has 2GB/s full duplex, fully redundant on separate geographic fiber rings for the same $3k/month. Plus a few redundant circuits with other providers, just in case…at additional cost of course.
It was more along the lines of how the streams interact with the software that plays them, than about the streams themselves. Because Amazon and Apple don’t allow integration with audiophile players like Roon or Audirvana, there’s some sort of sonic penalty involved.
And Tidal has caught lots of grief about their dishonest portrayal of “masters”. Shady company with equally shady MQA. I’m all in on Quboz. But if Amazon or Apple becomes integrated with Roon, will absolutely reconsider.
This seems to be a perverse point of view. I appreciate the summary, now I have less reason to tolerate him, lol.
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