Tidal Streaming Service

I don't know if any of you have heard of Tidal yet, but I figured I would give my first impressions based on using it today.

Tidal is a new music streaming service that lets you stream in FLAC format. Early reviews that I read were quite positive so I gave it a go.

Simply put, the sound quality is a massive step up from Spotify, Pandora, etc. That alone makes it worthwhile to me....CD quality audio from a streaming service.

My source is a 2014 MacBook Air, connected to an Oppo BDP-105D as a DAC. That feeds a Rogue Cronus Magnum which in turn powers a pair of Focal 1028BE. The only major comparison I have done so far is Oscar Petersons Night Train, but it is an album that I am quite familiar with. It sounded very much like the bluray copy of the album that I have, and was easily distinguishable from the same album streamed from Spotify in 320kbp.

That said, there are a number of drawbacks to the service right now. You can only stream Flac through Google Chrome at the moment. Outside of that, the quality is on par with Spotify. There are holes in the services library, essentially missing albums that would be available on more established services. The toughest omission for me to swallow is the inability to control what is playing on one device with a different devices, ie controlling the sound on the computer from an iPad/iPhone. Spotify's implementation of this is what I consider to be the industry standard.

Finally, the price is steep...$20 a month for the membership that allows for HQ streaming. This is not a big deterrent for me as I was already spending $17 a month on streaming, so canceling those services about evened things out.

The thing that excites me the most about Tidal is that it will likely force the hand of others in the industry like Spotify, Pandora, etc, to begin streaming in high quality formats. Then it boils down to libraries and how the company chooses to deliver its service (app quality, etc). Thats a winning proposition for all music fans.

I do wonder what it will do for the sites currently selling hq CD's and downloads. I would imagine the streaming business model will become quite a significant threat once their sound quality is on par with (or better) then what the buy to own sites have available. There is no question that the buy to owns sites will not be able to compete on the strength of their libraries alone.

It's a truly interesting and wonderful time to be immersed in the world of high quality audio. I would love to hear anyones thoughts on where the industry might go next.