Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Meridian and Tidal Streaming Service

Spotify offers the same 'local' option, allowing you to store the music locally. This is a great feature when you're mobile but don't have coverage (ie airplane).

Never tried it but believe Rhapsody also offers a similar local option.

Of course both max in 320.

In a fixed, home based system, I am not sure what the added value is of local storage. My internet pipe is big enough, cost wise there is no impact (as opposed to mobile streaming) and if buffering is decent there should not a sound difference.

Gapless (probably more predictible) and true instantaneous playback is what local cached music files brings.

Tidal does sound good in theory but my concerns are as follows:

1. Is the business model sustainable? They will need a serious amount of 'audiophiles' to make it work long term, and I'm not sure the general public would be prepared to pay a premium for the increased fidelity. Even if they did, you can bet Spotify/Google/Amazon etc. would start to offer a premium service if there was a clear demand for it. If Tidal went to the wall, what would then happen to the sizeable library I had built 'in the cloud'...?

2. I like to carry a decent amount of music on my phone for my commute/gym etc. where there is no WiFi. Assuming a FLAC album at 400MB and an MP3 at 100MB, then my library would be reduced to a 1/4 of it's previous size. I would then need to resort to streaming (in a 4G area) which would then eat into my data allowance. So would I need to spend an additional �x a month to get increased data allowance? The alternative I guess would be to rotate my collection which would be a pain...

So I am yet to be convinced. Will depend a lot on the offline option and how that will work on Sooloos.

I tried streaming Tidal over 4G (iPhone 5S) in a full signal area in London - it was unable to stream more than 5 seconds without having to stop and buffer.

From my experiences over the last month, it is a good product in terms of audio quality, but it is not ready for mainstream.

Other than the 4G issues, at home, streaming over 100Mb symmetric internet and onwards to an airport express, I have had other issues:

• iPad app - repeated crashes of the iPad app
• iPad app - significant gaps between tracks (definitely not gapless playback)
• MacOSX app - unable to AirPlay stream consistently - drops the AirPlay connection at the end of each track and frequently fails to re-establish the AirPlay connection (but shows the track as playing)
• "Curated" playlists with non-playable tracks (due to the record label not permitting streaming of the track)

Hopefully the iPad and MacOSX issues can be fixed in time (and not make their way into the Sooloos implementation), but the "Curated" playlists do show a complete lack of care by the people putting them together (if indeed they are really curated and not automatically produced and not checked).

A fairly positive review on AV forums.


AVForums review

I have not started an evaluation of Tidal (or WiMP) yet ... waiting for it to show up on Sonos. Rhapsody is not (really) profitable and has been around for years. It is also rock-solid but lacks Audio Quality (AQ).

There was a very interesting article on Spotify in the New Yorker last week. I urge anyone interested in that business to read it. Basically the CEO (Daniel Ek) partnered with a gifted techie guy who built a hybrid Peer-to-Peer/direct streaming system with low latency, and started out in Sweden/other "rich" countries and then sold equity to the major labels in the U.S. to gain entrance to the United States market.

Most of their customers watch ads instead of paying, this sort of hybrid "ad supported/premium paid" won't work with Tidal as it has a much lower potential customer base.

I hope Tidal succeeds, they need a kindly Daddy Warbucks type who is an audiophile and doesn't care about losing money. Perhaps a petrol billionaire from Finland ?

As for Spotify, Daniel is in it for the long haul (he is already rich and found it boring and empty), I agree with his premise that Spotify reduces piracy and increases revenue for artists, but mostly artists won't make much cash unless they are super popular (unless spotify becomes ubiquitous).

Best scenario IMHO for Tidal is they find Daddy Warbucks or prove their technology works (horizontally scalable and stable) and get bought out by Daniel. Such is the (short) life of most startups. Either way, Netapp and/or EMC make a bunch of money short term, providing NAS/SAN storage that dwarf our mini-NAS units at home ;-)

Hi MJT5282,

No petrol billionaires in Finland. In Norway maybe, where Tidal (Aspiro Group) HQ is. Aspiro is listed on Nasdaq ASP

In Norway Tidal is offering a 320 kbps as well, same pris as Spotify. A nice thing is that they have an editorial presence as well, following local music concerts etc. offering playlists.


//Frode

Apologies, Frode, I mistook Finland for Norway. Perhaps when I accumulate a few more millions I will partake in a proper tour of Scandinavia :-) I didn't realize their parent company is already public, hopefully they have positive cash flow from other operational revenue streams!

In the New Yorker article I mentioned, there is mention about the vast improvements made to the Spotify curation (which apparently was all AI but added some human elements). Local concerts etc are easily combined "on the fly" with location awareness plus local music taste. This is a way that streaming services can make a mark, but the custom coding required of the different products (for example, Sonos/Sooloos with Rhapsody) but it somewhat static.

I look forward to experiencing Tidal/WiMP when it is made available on Sonos (which I'm sure will be sooner than Sooloos :-) )

An example of successful streaming service that is growing at a controllable rate is Soundcloud, which just came out of beta and into a full-fledged source in Sonos. Berlin based, first rate web integration, also I believe had to give up equity to negotiate a streaming license in United States.

Ideally, our first rate streaming solution should be as easy to integrate to as Sonos has proven to be. Though I suspect that Sonos "greases the wheel" with payments as it is doing "size" selling their small, affordable mini-DSP speakers in the U.S. (and even now advertising on mainstream television).

Judging by the share price it does not look like a particularly healthy company. In fact, you can download the accounts on Aspiro website. I do hope Tidal takes off and they can turn their fortunes around, but I for one will be growing my music collection well and truly offline!

MTJ, no need for apologies.

You are much welcome over here if you decide come.

A main investor in Tidal is Norwegian biggest publishing company, Schibstedt.

I think the next big shift in music streaming business will be when Apple implements Beats streaming into iOS. That will be a game changer, IMO. With a lot of consolidation to follow.

Looking forward to Tidal/Wimp integration in Sooloos. I the mean time I am running Tidal/Wimp from Roomplayer+/Sonos/Bluesound.

Cheers,
Frode

With all the MQA hubbub this track has gone quiet.
I was curious whether we can look forward to a Christmas present from Meridian in the form of a new Sooloos & Tidal integration.

Interestingly, I saw Naim just released Spotify Connect integration.

I think we need to wait and see what's announced at CES in January.
PerS