2019: Amazon joins the partyĪmazon launches a lossless and hi-res streaming tier of its music service called ‘ Amazon Music HD’, offering subscribers over 50 million songs in CD quality and “millions” of 24-bit hi-res streams for an extra £5/$5/AU$5) per month. Some Spotify Premium subscribers in the US are offered access to a ‘Spotify Hi-Fi’ lossless streaming service via an in-app notification, sparking expectations that a CD-quality tier would soon be available for an extra $7.50-$10 on top of the cost of the Premium tier, which offers lossy 320kbps music.ĭeezer launches a ‘Deezer Hi-Fi’ lossless CD-quality tier for its desktop application, though it doesn’t roll out to its web player and Android and iOS apps until 2019. The first rumours of Spotify delivering a lossless quality tier appear. Later that year, Deezer (another French streaming service) also partnered with MQA, though a hi-res service never transpired. Tidal announces that hi-res streams – dubbed ‘ Tidal Masters’ – are being offered to subscribers of its ‘HiFi’ tier for no extra charge, following two years of hi-res streaming trials using MQA technology (we first heard it in January 2016). Tidal launches hi-res streaming on mobile (Image credit: Tidal) 2017: a promising year for progress In 2019, the service ditched lossy (MP3) streams entirely and entered the US market, and today claims to offer “the richest catalogue of hi-res music for streaming and download”. In June, Qobuz becomes the world's first service to deliver hi-res streaming, offering it to subscribers of its Sublime tier (which offers access to streaming, plus discounted hi-res downloads up to 24-bit/192kHz) via its Android app. Meridian Audio launches Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), a technology that facilitates the efficient streaming of hi-res music and would go on to powering hi-res streaming on Tidal from early 2017 (by which point MQA would be its own company). Around this time, it also announced plans to support hi-res streaming in partnership with Meridian's MQA technology (see below) and it launched in several more markets.
It was then acquired by Jay-Z in March 2015, leading to a star-studded 'relaunch' that saw the likes of Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire, Beyonce, Madonna, Daft Punk and more give a public show of support for the streaming service, with Tidal repositioning itself as "the first-ever artist-owned global music entertainment platform". The Tidal streaming service is born as a rebranded WiMP by its Norweigan founder Aspiro, bringing lossless (CD-quality) streaming to the UK and US.
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