[peterinvan]

MQA in Administration

My concern is that this may impact my Tidal subscription.

I have years invested in curating my Tidal playlists. They have done a good job of applying my preferences to their suggested listening. I like the UI and flexibility to play Tidal on any of my streaming devices. I "like" at least one new album per week.
The only perceived advantage of the MQA compression is that I can download large "hi-res" playlists to my portable streamers.
But I feel that Tidal is flogging a dead horse.
Let's hope that Tidal can afford to quickly convert their "Masters" to the original hi-res content (like Qobuz). If I were Tidal I would have a production line going already.

Meanwhile I have exported all my playlists to .CSV in case I need to use Soundiz to move to another platform.

 

[GoldenSound]

Id love to look at the financials. Where did you find them?

Also I wonder if they have IP that is in progress that isn’t publicized that they could sell - that would change the calculus for a potential buyer.

Their financials are on Companies house https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09123512/filing-history
Main points of interest/note would be:

1) Statement of going concern.
This part basically says 'If the investor pulls out we're bankrupt'. In fact not only that, but that they'd need additional funding ON TOP of what the main investor was already providing.

2) Comprehensive Income
They have been losing millions per year for some time. (£4.3 million in 2021 and 2020)

3) Balance Sheet
They are in TONS of debt with hardly any assets. (Over £11m owed to creditors as of 2021, likely around £15m now)

4) Directors Remuneration.
Highest paid director took home £400k and there were £700k in total for directors.
This alone is more than the entire turnover of the company.....

They are now in administration and need additional investment to save them.
Given they have not seen significant growth, the incredibly doubtful state of the company finances, and possibly just the fact that the directors seemed to be taking so much despite the performance of the company, if I was a potential investor I wouldn't be touching it with a 10 foot pole.

 

[GoldenSound]

MQA in Administration

My concern is that this may impact my Tidal subscription.

I have years invested in curating my Tidal playlists. They have done a good job of applying my preferences to their suggested listening. I like the UI and flexibility to play Tidal on any of my streaming devices. I "like" at least one new album per week.
The only perceived advantage of the MQA compression is that I can download large "hi-res" playlists to my portable streamers.
But I feel that Tidal is flogging a dead horse.
Let's hope that Tidal can afford to quickly convert their "Masters" to the original hi-res content (like Qobuz). If I were Tidal I would have a production line going already.

Meanwhile I have exported all my playlists to .CSV in case I need to use Soundiz to move to another platform.

Tidal and MQA are separate.
Tidal is not necessarily in the best place financially themselves. But MQA going into administration likely just means that Tidal may start to move away from using MQA and focus more on Atmos mixes etc.
Tidal is a separate company and will be fine despite this

 

[GoldenSound]

Also I wonder if they have IP that is in progress that isn’t publicized that they could sell - that would change the calculus for a potential buyer.

The main thing they have at the moment is the new Bluetooth codec they have been advertising recently.
However, it has similar issues to the core MQA product in that the benefits are completely unproven and have no evidence. Which combined with the fact that the 'trust us bro it's better than lossless' approach clearly didn't snowball the way they wanted, any sane investor would be asking 'why is this going to be different?'

The better play for MQA would have been to get other streaming services to adopt the format. They banked on Tidal's dominance to sell the audio format standard. Can't create a "standard" when it's only used on one platform.

The main issue is that other streaming services didn't want it.
I've had some VERY interesting conversations with some staff from a couple streaming services and whilst I of course can't divulge much, I think I can say that the reason MQA was only on Tidal was not for any lack of trying. MQA wanted other services, they just didn't want MQA.

 

[Mediahound]

Some more analysis here:

https://www.ecoustics.com/news/mqa-bankruptcy/

First, MQA’s attempt to get the MQAir codec into the Bluetooth standard failed when the Bluetooth SIG did not add it to the latest release. MQA had certainly been hoping for that as it would have given them a leg up on other competing codecs as being in the standard would ensure broader compatibility than any of the current proprietary offerings (aptX, LDAC, LHDC, etc.).

Having failed in their attempt to do that, MQAir was left to compete on a more even footing with more established offerings and has a tougher road ahead.

MQair was also named SCL6
Second, MQA changed the name on MQAir to SCL6; a move that likely was done intentionally to distance the product from the MQA name and make it more sale ready if/when the day came to pass.

Third, Anthony Edward Rupert, Richemont’s (now Reinet) representative on the MQA board resigned his seat roughly a month ago at the same time there was a flurry of debt restructuring going on according to court filings.

Richemont holds a roughly 24% stake in MQA and may well be the stockholder who is looking to sell based on Rupert’s recent departure.

Why would MQA go into Administration though if there is still a possibility of a sale of the SCL6 codec and a return to better days?

That is where the story gets interesting. In order to sell part of MQA, under British law, administrators have to be brought in to be sure that the split is equitable to the existing investors.

In a nutshell, MQA would have to be bought as an entity if they chose to conduct the sale themselves, but under administration, parts of MQA can be sold without buyers having to take on liabilities they are not interested in.

 

[OhHeyItsLou]

The main thing they have at the moment is the new Bluetooth codec they have been advertising recently.
However, it has similar issues to the core MQA product in that the benefits are completely unproven and have no evidence. Which combined with the fact that the 'trust us bro it's better than lossless' approach clearly didn't snowball the way they wanted, any sane investor would be asking 'why is this going to be different?'

The main issue is that other streaming services didn't want it.
I've had some VERY interesting conversations with some staff from a couple streaming services and whilst I of course can't divulge much, I think I can say that the reason MQA was only on Tidal was not for any lack of trying. MQA wanted other services, they just didn't want MQA.

Qobuz/Flac/lossless is superior. The sound quality difference is not small. Many say they can't hear any difference between MQA and Flac and that just baffles me.

 

[Mediahound]

Breaking news, Tidal will be introducing non MQA high-res. FLAC soon. I'm not sure what they will do about non high res Redbook.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TIdaL/comments/12hr68f/ama_w_jesse_tidal/jfuo1ng/

we will be introducing hi-res FLAC for our HiFi Plus subscribers soon. It's lossless and an open standard. It's a big file, but we'll give you controls to dial this up and down based on what's going on.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Breaking news, Tidal will be introducing non MQA high-res. FLAC soon. I'm not sure what they will do about non high res Redbook.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TIdaL/comments/12hr68f/ama_w_jesse_tidal/jfuo1ng/

Nice, good enough reason to give Tidal another look. Will probably take quite while to replace all MQA content they've accumulated.

 

[moonfishing]

If you believe these guys hi-fi actually coming to Spotify
MQA is dead! Are ANY new audio innovations good?

 

[BS5711]

I don't think the deception is only with MQA, Tidal don't seem to be any better.

I was a Tidal "Master" tier subscriber, and liked Tidal as a platform, but the outright deception by MQA about what MQA is and isn't didn't sit well with me so I cancelled my Tidal subscription. I then heard about the apparently upcoming Hi Res FLAC replacement for MQA on Tidal after the news of MQA's chapter 11. I figured the deception was by MQA and not Tidal so in the meantime I could try the CD quality "HiFi" tier, at least that was lossless if not Hi Res.

So I sign up for HiFi and start playing some music and find that many of the songs that are shown to be available as MQA on my previous "Master" subscription still show as "Master" on a HiFi tier subscription. When playing many of these songs, not all but a lot of those on my playlists, they actually show as MQA on a couple of my DACs even though I only have a HiFi subscription. On another DAC the Master tracks show an indicator light that is consistent with CD lossless, not MQA ..... curious.

On digging a bit further I discover that this is also a known issue. It seems that Tidal simply change the encryption of MQA files so a DAC doesn't recognise them as MQA and they pass that off as CD quality when it is in fact still lossy MQA that was misrepresented in the first instance.

So MQA misrepresent what MQA is, Tidal know of the anti MQA backlash but still attempt to hide MQA files as CD quality lossless through a HiFi subscription but don't implement the change in the encryption well enough to fool all DACs. The Tidal advertising clearly states "lossless", some might be but not those with a Master designation as best I can ascertain.

I cancelled Tidal completely and it will take a heck of a great new implementation of CD and Hi Res files to convince me to try again.

 

[PorscheFanatic]

I am curious about MQA now.

 

[Ghoostknight]

i will be happy to try tidal again once they switched over to non-mqa flac, specially the videos intrigue me but i avoided tidal because of mqa