Roger Fingas
Tidal on Monday updated its iPhone and iPad app with access to "master-quality" tracks, a step beyond what the service's HiFi tier normally allows.
Master-quality audio, or MQA for short, is available as an option with a HiFi subscription, which costs $19.99 per month. Only a little over 150,000 tracks are streaming in the format — each track plays at 96 kilohertz and 24 bits, whereas regular HiFi is in CD-quality FLAC, meaning 44.1 kilohertz and 16 bits.
Tidal claims that MQA files are no bigger than regular HiFi, but the tradeoff is that they require more intense decoding. In fact MQA was previously limited to phones with specialized decoding chips, none of them from Apple.
The HiFi tier can be tried free for 30 days with a new Tidal subscription. A standard Tidal Premium plan is $9.99 per month, though family, student, and military discounts are also available.
Tidal has largely struggled to compete in on-demand streaming. While its name isn't unknown, thanks partly to a deal with Sprint, it's dwarfed by Apple Music's 50-million-plus listeners. Spotify, meanwhile, has over 87 million paid customers, and yet more people on its free ad-based tier.
Tidal is typically seen as having just two advantages: HiFi and exclusives from artists like Jay-Z and Beyonce, both of whom are among the service's celebrity owners. Some others include Daft Punk, Damian Marley, deadmau5, Jack White, Madonna, and Nicki Minaj.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Sponsored Content
25 Comments
so how do i listen to mqa audio at max quality via aac?
I have to imagine the market for people who both care about this and are willing to pay for it is quite small.
Having lossless audio is great, and something I wish Apple would have. But MQA - how does this make it out of the phone and to the listener?
If the answer is "external DAC attached to your phone", I'm guessing the target market goes from "low" to "very, very low".
I feel like the overlap of the ven diagram that shows fans of Jayz and Beyoncé with the amount of people who are dumb enough to believe they can hear the difference between a 256 kbps AAC file and these master versions is pretty small.
Heck most people don’t even own equipment good enough to hear what’s available in those files. I had no idea my music could sound as full as it does until I got my HomePod, and I have a nice pair of Sony’s higher end headphones.
If you really want an amazing listening experience, get Apple Music, and a couple HomePods and call it a day.