Tidal to Offer the Highest Quality Streaming in the World
Tidal’s niche in the music streaming market has been high-quality streaming but now they’re to offer even higher quality audio streaming.
Jay Z’s music streaming service Tidal is to start offering Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) music for the same price as their CD-quality, high-definition service. When Tidal launch their ultra high-quality streaming they will be the first full streaming service.
The launch of MQA streaming corresponds with the launch of the world’s first MQA-ready music player, the Pioneer XDP-100R. The portable HD audio player based off of Android OS is set to ship out later this month with Tidal included.
MQA is a new file format that offers studio quality, high-resolution audio in a smaller package to make it more viable for streaming and downloading. This means that applicable songs will be available to listen to on Tidal as they sounded straight out of the studio.
Tidal began looking at even higher quality audio streaming than was currently available earlier this year with a successful demo. The first MQA-streamed files will be available on desktops before coming to Tidal’s Android and iOS apps through an update.
Reportedly, Tidal is in talks with record labels to fully discuss and lay out the details but for the moment Tidal say the plan is to continue to charge $20 a month for their higher quality service when MQA comes out. Tidal also offer a standard quality subscription for $9.99 a month, more in line with the services of Spotify or Apple Music.