WSJ: Apple in talks to buy Tidal

vcwatkins · June 2016

Talks are 'exploratory'.
Link to summary of WSJ article in Engadget

Mikey081057 · June 2016

I hope it makes Itunes better and not Tidal worse...

BlueFox · June 2016

Mikey081057 wrote: »

I hope it makes Itunes better and not Tidal worse...

Exactly. I was going to say the same thing.

EndersShadow · June 2016

BlueFox wrote: »

Mikey081057 wrote: »

I hope it makes Itunes better and not Tidal worse...

Exactly. I was going to say the same thing.

HA! Doubtful.....

MOG was great.... bought by Beats... sucked.... bought by Apple.... died.....

I expect the same. Buy the competition then kill it.....

mhardy6647 · June 2016

Cynic that I am -- my hunch is that the most likely outcome is... both.

BlueFox · June 2016

Well, since I don't stream music, the point is moot. But it would be a nice world if we all had high speed Internet access, and could stream high res files of every song ever recorded. That is what Bernie Sanders should have campaigned with, not free college.

txcoastal1 · June 2016

Would be a real shame if the quality slumps or the company is squashed.
I was anti-Tidal, anti-streaming for my main rigs for a while and my attitude has changed in the last 6-months and have grown quite fond of Tidal.

The purchase of Tidal by JayZ has turned into a bit of a fiasco
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/is-jay-z-eyeing-an-exit-from-tidal
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/03/31/jay-z-sues-previous-owners-music-service-tidal/82460988/

So I will be keeping an eye out

DaveHo · June 2016

As a hater of all things Apple, I say ugh. Hopefully if it goes through they leave it alone.

kevhed72 · July 2016

I think I'll hold off on the hi res streaming thing for awhile.....love the Squeezebox Duet so far though....

Toolfan66 · July 2016

Never looked into Tidal, $20 a month?? I'll pass, $240 a year??

tonyb · July 2016

All the music services have extreme catalogs, some more so than others. Tidals is somewhat limited in comparison.

I dunno Skip, nobody is buying 2 cd's a month, maybe that's why they are disappearing. Not enough good music these days to warrant 1 cd a month if you ask me.

It's not just the 20 bucks, it's all cumulative for the average joe. All these services add up, Neflix, cable, music services, cell phones, security, identity protection, online protection, etc. Simple economics in my view when the cost of simply living keeps going up and your wages stay stagnant or go down. You then start prioritizing things.

Mikey081057 · July 2016

If you are an Itunes or Spotify or Pandora or any other paid subscriber Then it could be $8 to $10 more / mo. that you have to weigh whether the incremental is worth it for CD quality streaming. I dropped my Sirius XM subscription as it sucks anyhow.

txcoastal1 · July 2016

I use shazam and soundhound a lot. Constantly picking up songs at audio shows/shops, movies, bars just where and whenever I hear a song that fits my fancy and may sound good on my rigs.

Many are just one hit wonders for me and I'm not really interested in the whole CD. I've tried streaming services many times on my big rigs and have never really like any of them until Tidal.

I have a large collection of music ripped to hard drives and my NAS. Along with totes and CD cases of discs. Still when doing shows you just can't have it all. This LSAF was the first year I had Tidal. Paired with my collection there wasn't anything I was not able to play on request by the listeners.

I tried Tidal when it was first available here in the US and it was lacking, but now I rarely come across anything that won't show up in Tidal.

My Simaudio DAC automatically will display the recorded media sampling as it plays songs. Tidal always displays 16/44.

Just my .02

---cheers

gudnoyez · July 2016

2 cds a month? I wish I could limit myself to that, since the Barnes and Noble by us got a huge selection of CDS and vinyl, I went there to have them order me Neils Rust Never Sleeps blu ray and ended walking other the door with a half dozen cd's they have them priced to sell and the selection is decent. Tidal no thanks. Oh by the way you Neil fans the 5.1 newly released Blu Ray is fantastic the video is cleaned up a bit, the audio is stellar. XM is the only thing I subscribe to and that's because the wife has to have her 70s on 7 and the Bridge in her truck, otherwise I would cancel the subscription.

rooftop59 · July 2016

Toolfan66 wrote: »

Never looked into Tidal, $20 a month?? I'll pass, $240 a year??

Think about it this way. Of lot of you own several thousand CDs. Let's say 5000 is a really good collection. How much does that cost? @15 a pop that 75k, @10 a pop (more realistic nowadays) that's 50 k.

I own about 500 CDs, which is way more than most people I know. So I still need to 4500 CDs at the tune of 45k to get a really nice collection.

If I have tidal for the next 40 years, that's 9600k. A savings of 35k.

Now of course prices will go up with inflation, and CDs are forever. But streaming is her to stay, and prices will stay competitive. And even if I do this for five years and decide nah I'm going back to CDs, I only missed out on 120 CDs, just a drop in the bucket.

I love the SQ of tidal, and most of the other elements have drastically improved. Not quite as good as Spotify on the extras, but very competitive, and SQ trumps all that for me. So I hope if apple does buy tidal, they don't eff it up. I think they could bring lots of improvements, but only time will tell...

tonyb · July 2016

Either way, I don't see Tidal staying the same after they sell. I might be more confident if Google bought them. You know.....a real tech company, instead of a marketing company.

Dennis Gardner · July 2016

I guess it is all relative as I see the monthly cost as a minor thing since I am able to use it for sound events that I do 6-8 times a year. I did my last MMA event and downloaded and held 29 of 30 tracks for the walk in music for each fighter. I could never have had such a catalog myself and downloading them individually would have cost $29 through iTunes. There was only one track that I couldn't find a clean version of from Tidal. I had to go to Youtube for it. Small investment for an $800 paycheck.

rooftop59 · July 2016

Google has basically gone the same way as Apple. Not the same as the glory days. And whatever you think of apple, saying they not a real tech company seems pretty silly to me. It's true, they have never really had a truly original product, but all their major products have redefined the landscape, and not just for cosmetic reasons. iMac, ipod, iPhone, iPad, all transformed what we thought was possible with those platforms...

AsSiMiLaTeD · July 2016

Granted I'm biased since I work for them, but to say Apple isn't a tech company is absolutely ludicrous. I'll leave my comments at that and skip the Google comment...

tonyb · July 2016

rooftop59 wrote: »

Google has basically gone the same way as Apple. Not the same as the glory days. And whatever you think of apple, saying they not a real tech company seems pretty silly to me. It's true, they have never really had a truly original product, but all their major products have redefined the landscape, and not just for cosmetic reasons. iMac, ipod, iPhone, iPad, all transformed what we thought was possible with those platforms...

Now that's the point isn't it. They pretty much copy everyone else and make everything proprietary around their software. Granted they cater to the more marketing side, graphic design and such,

Personally I don't see how any of their products transformed landscapes, except like I said, in the graphic design fields. I'm not an apple hater, just think the hype far outweighs the worth.

They had something way back when, but others have caught up and it's now a more crowded field.

rooftop59 · July 2016

I do think that taking an idea like an MP3 player and actually making it work really well and be really intuitive son the masses can and do want to use it definitely qualifies as an invention.

The iPhone might be even more radical. Did u ever try to use an old blackberry smart phone before the iPhone? My wife had one for work. It was awful, basically useless. Then the iPhone came along...

How can u eat at a restaurant or go to any public place and say that Apple hasn't transformed the landscape? Everywhere u look people are on their smartphone. And many of those are still iPhones, and the ones that aren't exist because of the iPhone. U may not like smartphones, but they have changed many aspects of modern life, and that wouldn't have happened without the iPhone.

Mikey081057 · July 2016

It's not about functionality it's about the USER EXPERIENCE... you can have all the functionality in the world but if a 1st grader can't figure it out and become proficient at using the app... it will only reach at best 10-20 % of users.

I don't use Apple and don't like the way I can't change a battery or add memory but I can't deny that their model has been successful to date.

AsSiMiLaTeD · July 2016

All good points by rooftop59, I'll add a couple thoughts below but first a direct response to Tony's comment about Apple being a marketing company.

Tony I'll use your own argument against you, let's say I grant you that Apple is only a marketing company (I actually disagree strongly but for the purposes here I'll choose not to debate that point). If that's the case, then looking at the numbers you'd have to concede that they're the best marketing company in the world today (if that's all they do and they're the most valuable company in the world today then they must be the most successful at it). So if you're like most us audiophiles and really love the idea of lossless music, wouldn't you want the best marketing company in the world selling that concept to the masses? People often accuse Apple of taking a simple concept and making it sound more significant than it really is, what nobody ever disputes however is that it's highly effective...wouldn't you want the same push behind lossless music?

As for my other points and longer response:
First point - without iTunes and Apple laying the groundwork for getting the labels on board with the digital world of music we're very likely not having this discussion because services like Tidal and Spotify don't exist. I get that those companies did the legwork in getting the streaming idea out there and functional, but without the groundwork laid by iTunes 15 years ago that's a much more monumental if not impossible task. One common argument is that Apple didn't invent the idea of a digital music service, although this is true they did do three things that I see as key the the long term viability of that platform. First, they made a product and service that was actually usable and good and that people were willing to pay for. Second, they worked out deals with the studios and created the first real broad market mass scale digital music store (there were others before them but none even remotely on the same scale as iTunes). Finally, they proved that the whole thing could work, they proved that people were willing to pay for a good platform and for digital music.

Second point - there appears to be a strong sentiment among some people that Apple has never truly had an 'original' idea of their own, that they just take other people's ideas and make them more usable and market them better then turning those into an popular industry. I definitely disagree, but let's say for the moment I grant you that argument...one thing you cannot argue with is their success in building an industry because there are hard numbers to show the impact of things like iTunes and smartphone sales.

So if you're Tidal isn't that what you want? If you're a Tidal customer don't you want the extra features that Apple could bring to the table? Don't you want the extra content and the human curated playlists and the financial backing of a company who can help with all the financial and lawsuit BS Tidal going through right now and ensure your long term viability? Likewise, if you're an Apple Music person don't you want the exclusive content from Tidal and their lossless streaming? I do.

Is there a possibility that Apple will just buy the name and the exclusive content and then dump the rest of it? Sure, that's technically a possibility but it's a highly unlikely one. They're much more likely to do what they've done with many other acquisitions, take all the great things about that service and fold it into their own. They'll make some mistakes along the way, the first iteration of Apple Music has had it's issues to be sure. The likely outcome here is that we'll get the benefits of Tidal and Apple Music rolled into a single service.

BlueFox · July 2016

If Apple does buy Tidal, and does not dumb it down, then, yes, it will be a great thing. If they start selling lossless and high-res files on iTunes then it will be an even better thing. So, lets see what happens.

mantis · July 2016

iTunes just needs to start offering High Rez files and be done with it. They have enough money to do anything they want and then some so why not right?

WSJ: Apple in talks to buy Tidal

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