Jay Z's US$19.99 Tidal HiFi launched with Artiste Backing - How HD Audio Quality Music selected by Artiste will turn the Tide

I am thoroughly convinced that Jay Z is a certified Music Genius since he's launched his Tidal Streaming Music service on Monday March 30^th 2015 as announced in the article “Kanye, Rihanna and Beyoncé turn blue for Jay Z's Spotify rival Tidal”, published March 30, 2015 4:26 AM PDT by Rich Trenholm, CNET News.

The launch was a star studded affair with many of Jay Z's friends in the Music Business on hand to sign up and commit to this groundbreaking service as shown in the Tidal Press Launch below.

The idea behind Tidal is very simple; Artiste own their own Streaming label where subscribers pay a premium price of HD Audio Streaming via Wireless Broadband Platforms.  This translates to higher profits for artiste being as they are co-owners of tidal along with Jay Z as noted in the article “Show them the money: Will Jay Z’s new streaming service Tidal pay out?”, published APRIL 9, 2015 by The Wrap, Fortune.

Beyonce is quite lucky to be married to him, especially since the idea for Tidal may be partly inspired by her desire for a pure music experience as argued in my blog article entitled “Beyonce's latest album released entirely on Apple iTunes - Queen Bee's Cornucopia Breaking Bad iTunes records via an efficient Music Delivery monetizing Music Videos eye-Candy”.

On Monday March 30^th 2015, Jay Z promoted the his #TIDAL4ALL Hashtag for persons to tweet their support for his Global vision of Streaming that offers fair compensation for Musical artiste for their Studio Work as noted in the article “Jay Z set to reveal Tidal plans as stars lend support with #TIDALforALL tweets”, published Monday 30 March 2015  by Stuart Dredge, The Uk Guardian.

As part of with his friends turning their Twitter profiles blue to symbolize the significance of the launch has noted in the article “Musical Glitterati back Jay Z's Spotify Rival on Twitter with #TidalforAll”, published March 30, 2015 By Andy Boxall, DigitalTrends.

So is Tidal going to turn the Tide, as Jay Z host suggests, allowing artiste to finally make money from Streaming music, the same issue which forced Taylor Swift to leave Spotify as noted in my blog article entitled “@TaylorSwift13 leaves Spotify – How Spotify’s continues to give 37.5 million users Globally Free Music who need to pay for Music Streaming”?

Will the artiste affiliated with Tidal get a slice of the US$1 billion in revenue in 2014 based on the stats of the RIAA in my blog article entitled “@RIAA says Streaming beating CD Sales - Why HD Audio Physical Digital Music comeback progresses as Piracy is the Problem”?

Or is Jay Z out of touch with the realities of the Music Industry as argued in the article “How Jay Z’s Tidal Press Conference Showed He’s Out of Touch”, published March 31, 2015 by Daniel D’Addario, Time?

We’ll he isn’t; he’s actually correct, as I’ll demonstrate in my little ditty! 

Jay Z's Tidal HiFi launched with Artiste Backing - How HD Audio Quality Music selected by Music Artiste will turn around the Music Industry

Tidal is part of a Swedish streaming company named company Aspiro that Jay Z purchased for $56 million.

With that purchase came Tidal and a European streaming service WiMP, both of which Jay Z acquired as part of the deal.

Unlike Spotify, there is no free option for Tidal Music Streaming, which by the way had been in operation in the UK and the USA since 2014.

Instead, global streaming users pay for music in one of two (2) affordable packages:

1.      US$9.99 Premium Streaming which gets you standard sound quality playback

2.      US$19.99 Tidal HiFi which gets you HD Audio Quality Streaming

So who in their right mind would buy Music, especially when you can Torrent Music downloads as noted in my blog article entitled “How to download High Quality Music via torrenting – The Mortal Instruments City of Bones used to get Free Music”?

Worse, you can also get music by using Indexes as explained in my blog article entitled “How to download Music using Index Query in Google Search Engine – Google Search Engine sniffs out indexes loaded with Music”, which Google is yet to stop.

Folks, this is where I separate the casual listeners from the Musical puritans, otherwise known as Audiophiles.

Tidal is for Audiophiles – Why Streaming 192 Hz 24 Chanel HD Audio to your smartphone is a thing

That's because the Music involved is HD Audio Quality Music, the same type of Music Files that can be played by an expensive HD Audio MP4 Player like the US$700 Sony Walkman NWXZ-ZX1 as described in my blog article entitled “US$700 Sony Walkman NWXZ-ZX1 – Trend towards HD Audio in Asia and Japan will make it sell in the US of A”.

Or, if you want better quality Audio and more storage, you can opt for the US$1,249 Cowon Plenue 1 as described in my blog article entitled “US$1,249 Cowon Plenue 1 - The Rolls Royce of HD Audio Players defines High End Music with Sony Walkman NWXZ-ZX1 as Christmas Competition”.

If you are a true Apple fan, then you won't ,mind buying a US$490 Apple iPod Classic with 160GB that's capable of playing these Lossless File formats as noted in my blog article entitled “US$490 Apple iPod Classic Revival – Hipsters go Retro for HD Audio Capable Music Player”.

HD Audio Music is yet to be fully defined by the Music Industry. But the Music quality can be seen as files that have a resolution of 24-bit recorded with a sampling rate of 192 kHz encompassing all twenty four (24) channels of sound present during recording. 

That means these Music files, typically 50 MG or larger in size, are Lossless Audio files that can only be played back by MP4 players that run the latest Lossless Codecs compatible with Dolby Digital Stereo Surround Sound.

This is totally unlike MP3, which are typically have a sampling rate of 112 KHz or lower, and are usually missing most of the original channels from the studio recording, resulting in small portable 5 MB files. With HD Audio formats, however, you hear each and every one of those original twenty four (24) Audio channels recorded in the studio, even if you can’t hear them.

Examples of such Lossless File Formats include:

1.      AAC

2.      Apple Lossless Audio

3.      ATRAC

4.      FLAC

5.      WAV

6.      MP3

7.      MP4

The result is playback so crisp, especially if you are wearing one of those headphones as listed in my blog article entitled “Five Great Over-the-Ear Headphones - Noise Cancelling, Comfortable, Fashionable Bluetooth Music Streaming” that you can hear every note and every sound in the studio recording room, even the rasping breath of the studio artiste.

Effectively when you're listening to music on one of these HD Audio Players like Neil Young's PonoPlayer as described in my blog article entitled “Neil Young’s Righteous PonoMusic and US$200 PonoPlayer Kickstarter - The Hills are alive with the Sound of FLAC Music despite HD Music being a new phenomenon with new packaging”, it is as if you are inside of the studio.

Why Tidal makes sense – HD Audio Files are cumbersome to download and Store on Cloud or smartphone

Audiophiles, we're looking at Audio playback standards that result in some very large Music files, even larger than the 50 MB WAV files used in Audio CD’s. To host files of that size and stream them or to even download them personally comes at a cost that you’ll feel in terms of Hard-drive storage, Cloud Storage and Internet Data plans on your Smartphone.

You’ll also need a good paid of over-the-ear Noise Cancelling Headphones such as the US$299.99 Bose Quiet Comfort 25 Headphones as described in my blog article entitled “US$299.99 Bose Quiet Comfort 25 Headphones - Why the QC25 improves on the QC15 despite no Inductive Rechargeable Battery”, my personal favourite out of the bunch.

But in case you think that's US$19.99 cents expensive, then consider this; You cannot get HD audio any other way currently for free online, as the files are so large and take a long time to download.

Thus many hosting services require uploaders of such large files to pay for their storage, such as Amazon Cloud Drive US$60 a year for the Unlimited Everything Plan as reported in my MICO Wars Blog article entitled “@Amazon Cloud Drive Unlimited Photos Plan and Unlimited Everything Plan beats the competition”.

Most hosting service that host HD Audio files eventually remove them as they cost a lot more to host. Ditto to for free torrenting websites, as their large sizes makes them unpopular among downloaders looking to download these HD Audio files.

Even if you manage to find HD Audio quality Music file online and download them, be they free or via a paid hosting service, they are notoriously hard to store. Because these are the same size as WAV files used on CD, you're looking at storage spaces as large as a typical CD, which is 700 MB to store a mere fourteen (14) songs.

So if you have more than fourteen (14) songs, you’re gonna need a lot of Hard-drive space on your smartphone. A typical 128 GB micro SD Card would only hold about two thousand five hundred and sixty (2560) HD audio WAV files at 50 MB apiece on average, which to an audiophile is barely scratching the surface for any serious music listener or collector.

You'd have to walk around with a dedicated External Hard-Drive or a very large MP4 Player and go back to the days of the Apple iPod where you had to synch and download songs from iTunes to your Apple Mac of PC and then to your Apple iPod as described in my blog article entitled “Apple iPod Classic is Dead as Apple iPhone 6 Rises - Why a US$250 Apple iPod HD Music Player with Streaming Option is Possible”.

Streaming vs Downloading - HD Audio – the only problem is your Data Plan from you Telecom Provider

Thus, with all those factors considered, unless you want to go back to playing your music on Cassette Walkman, CD players like the Discman of a portable LP's as is currently the trend among some music obsessed audiophile Hipsters as noted in my blog article entitled “Statista projecting Vinyl Records to breach 7 million Sold – Vinyl Record Pressing Renaissance by Hipsters for owning all things Luddite”, Tidal is not bad.

Paying US$19.99 per month for Streaming, basically the price of one CD that packs only fourteen (14) WAV format music files to listen to an unlimited stock of music, seems like a deal to me. Especially as you have a US$9.99 per month Streaming option that matches Spotify but with the majority of the money going to the artiste.

Still these HD Audio files are large and hard to download. But equally challenging is the Bandwidth requirements to stream all twenty four (24) Audio Channels of Music for you to hear on your smartphone while wearing one of those headphones I mentioned.

HD Audio will easily eat through your Data Plan on your Smartphone; Wi-Fi in the office will quickly become your best friend!

However, with those artistes that Jay Z has signed on, look out for a lot of exclusive releases from them and Jay Z himself. This may be a small price to pay for what’s guaranteed to be HD audio quality personally curated Music. These artistes are personally vetting their music, supporting Tidal with exclusive releases.

They’re also curating new artiste who wish to join Tidal as  well as their own Music, a treat to subscribers, as they are guaranteed that what they’re listening to music was personally chosen for their listen pleasure by, say, Madonna, Kanye West or even Rihanna.

That attention to the customers will guarantee the Music artiste continue revenue, as it brings them closer to their fans when they know that the music was chosen by a celebrity artiste and not a unfeeling computer, as in the case of Spotify.

Very similar to the successful business model of Beats Audio streaming service that Apple purchased as noted in my blog article entitled “Apple officially confirms Beats Audio Purchase - US$3.2 Billion as Apple gears up for Subscription Streaming and improved Headphones”.

US$19.99 is a Bargain for Streaming HD Audio – Jay Z to make money when 4G LTE goes global

Already, he has ported his latest album Reasonable Doubt from Spotify to his new Tidal service as noted in the article “Jay Z pulls album Reasonable Doubt from Spotify after launching Tidal”, Published Tuesday 07 April 2015 by JESS DENHAM, The Independent UK.

Artiste Beyoncé’s Die With You single premiered on Tidal alongside also Rihanna’s American Oxygen music video exclusively on Tidal as noted in the article “Rihanna and Beyoncé unveil new music via Jay-Z's Tidal”, published Tuesday 7 April 2015, The Uk Guardian.

So despite complaints of the high prices, keep in mind that the aim is to raise the quality of Music that the Music Industry puts out by simply making sure quality content has a place to shine free of Industry competition as opined by Jay Z and his Tidal team in the article “Has the Tidal backlash already begun?”, published Wednesday, 8 Apr 2015 by Alexandra Gibbs, NBC News.

Audiphiliacs will love this service, as at US$19.99, Tidal HiFi is cost-effective. Their main concern is really Streaming Caps from Telecom Providers. Tidal is definitely set to turn the tide as 4G LTE and High-speed Broadband spreads through the US of A and the World.