Will TIDAL and CD Quality Streaming Survive

October 29th, 2016
By: Carlin "Rick" Smith

Let me be the first to say I really hope it does whether it be TIDAL or something else.  Confession of an audiophile: I never tried streaming services at all until we started to carry the excellent Aurender digital transports which had a TIDAL client nicely integrated into the unit and the iPad interface.  After using it for over a year now at the HiFi tier (CD Lossless Quality) I love it.  It hasn't replaced my own collection, to the contrary it supplements, allows experimentation and discovery, and offers a great way to share curated playlists with others.  I won't argue that TIDAL is better than Spotify or Apple Music or vice versa as I am not interested entering any religious debate but I know there is some market out there for higher quality streaming for those that are using streaming more or less strictly in their 2 channel listening rooms not jogging at gym on the treadmill.

So while TIDAL recently posted a 30% increase in revenue of paying customers it also announced a 28 million loss for fiscal year 2015. Maybe the price is too high?  Maybe the target audience is too low due to uninformed audiophile snobs turning their nose at the thought of streaming (I know I can include myself in this camp).  Lets hope a service like TIDAL will survive and ultimately flourish.