When music streaming service Tidal first launched, its biggest selling point was the ability to upgrade to a high fidelity “lossless” quality sound. Now, Tidal is further upgrading the quality of its services by offering “master quality” audio free of charge to Tidal HiFi subscribers.
Tidal is able to achieve this quality by partnering with Master Quality Authenticated, a new technology that is able to pack extremely high fidelity audio files into smaller files that will only expand to their true size if the listener has bandwidth available. Think how Netflix streams will alter quality depending on the quality of your connection. The initial catalog of music available for master quality streaming includes Jay Z, Beyonce, Mac Miller and more.
Record labels have been pushing for higher quality audio for some time, citing studies that listeners are willing to pay more for high quality audio. Unfortunately that hasn’t panned out for Tidal, which as struggle to match the subscriber growth of Spotify and Apple Music. Those two streaming services are also the only two who have not expressed interest in Master Quality Authenticated streaming, whereas Tidal, Pandora and Rhapsody/Napster are all planning on using the new technology.
Tidal’s Master Quality Authenticated streaming is currently only available on desktop, highlighting the problem of data usage in an era when most people use their mobile devices to stream on the go and carriers are increasingly stingy about how much data you can use.
Watch a promo video for Tidal’s new quality of streaming below.