MQA is Bad For Music Industry

Nightfall

https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music

Thoughts?

sucks2beme

Everything out there is bad for music.
Apple wants recordings mastered to sound good on iXXX
with cheap earbuds.
The studios want DRM so tight you can't load it on your music server.
Many want all music to be hosted in the cloud and you pay to store it there
monthly.
I'm still buying used cd's and loading them up in flac.

A quick look at the current music industry screams "payola".
A whole lot of bland so so artists seem to dominate.

At least this would promote music at a decent resolution.

Yes, I'm old and sarcastic.



I

steveinaz

Sucks2beme; hammer, nail, head buddy.

Emlyn

This is sort of like someone from Samsung claiming Apple is bad for the computer industry. Linn has a vested interest in open high resolution music streaming systems because they made that their primary business line ten years ago. MQA is a closed system. Just like most people could care less about high resolution DVD-Audio, SACD, Blu-Ray Pure Audio and high resolution downloads even fewer will care about "studio quality" streaming and be willing to pay extra for it. My advice to Linn would be to keep on doing what they are doing. I suspect their gripe is they have to pay a license fee to access MQA on Tidal through their gear and if they don't some of their customers may be reluctant to buy their gear. Every Blu-Ray and DVD has license fees associated with the development and patenting of the technology contributing to some of the cost. That's business, and music is as much big business as it is art even for Linn.

Moose68Bash

If MQA becomes closed and fully proprietary, then its adoption will have considerably deleterious effects all along the "supply chain," as the author says. And that will be bad for us listeners, until such time as happens what always happens with monopolies of this sort -- somebody comes along with new and better technology because the monopolist has gotten too greedy, thus providing an "umbrella" of too high prices to give innovators the incentive to sneak in under the umbrella and steal the business.

Same old same old story in the free market: It takes time, but the "free" in "free market" is an irresistible force given sufficient time.

Emlyn

I am still surprised that places like HDTracks are allowed to sell high res tracks without copy protection. The prices are still high on what they sell, so the music labels must be happy with putting their stuff out there. Especially when buyers are paying for the same album in a new format or remaster for the fifth time.

txcoastal1

Music industry will adjust. Artists used to make their money doing cheap concerts, trying to sell albums. That roll has reversed to expensive concerts less on the music media.