WHY I’M NOT ON TIDAL

TIDAL is calling their files of my songs Masters. But Tidal’s MQA files are not my masters. I make my masters - not TIDAL. I don’t need some hocus-pocus file manipulation that claims to improve my work. I made my masters the way I wanted them to sound. If TIDAL referred to their titles as TIDAL MASTERS, I would have no problem, but they don’t. They call them Masters. I had my music removed from that platform. They are not my masters.

TIDAL FALSELY LABELING MY RECORDINGS AS MASTERS

Tidal’s master is a degradation of the original to make it fit in a box that collects royalties. That money ultimately is paid by listeners. I am not behind it. I am out of there. Gone. My masters are the original.

AMAZON HD and Qobuz are good alternatives to TIDAL where the real music - exactly as made by the artists and producers - is played. They play my masters. I don’t care if I am the last of a dying breed. I am proud to stand up for the work I did with my friends over the last 55 years. I don’t need or want Tidal’s so called improvements. I have heard them. They are degraded from my masters. They are manipulated and not our original work. I don’t buy the TIDAL hype.

MQA is the company supplying technology to TIDAL. In their own official descriptions they go into what they did to my original files. They altered them and charge a royalty. I feel that my master files are in no way improved. They are degraded and manipulated. I made them. I know the difference. I can hear it.

Neil Young

 

about MQA -

Here are just a few of the hundreds of comments:

“I think there’s a big push Warner’s loading 16/44.1 MQA versions on Tidal and taking off the red book version so giving users no option, it looks like  controlled streaming is alive and well and people with non MQA DAC have a limping along damaged file.”

“it is sad.  The closer we come to the holy grail of reproducing the musical experience exactly, the more the majors want to cripple the recording. We debate differences of one thousandths of a percent in some of our equipment and then we are supplied damaged recordings.”

“What they want to do is take the original Mona Lisa off the wall and replace it with an infrared scan that shows all the covered up mistakes and changes underneath in fake color and tell you that, trust us, you will like it better than the original. then, every few years, they will bring the original out, place it in a special room and charge you extra to see it.”

“I will not pay for a substandard product, period. That is all MQA is. If I wanted compressed, I would listen to MP3's or others that do not manipulate the original data. MQA is just a train wreck.”

Check out this link to the more than 840 pages of comments in the subject called “MQA is Vaporware”