covenant

Big names attached...Beyoncé, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, Usher, Calvin Harris, and of course Jay Z.

Its main claim is that while Spotify offers 320kbps music, it will offer CD quality streaming using the “Free Lossless Audio Codec” or FLAC – ALAC (Apple AAPL -0.51% Lossless Audio Codec) is used on iPhone and other iOS devices. The specs say that you’ll get the full CD sampling rate of 44 kHz, 16bit and at a bitrate of 1411kbps.

Comes at double the price of spotify, but is it worth the extra money? Personally, I don't sit in a quiet room with headphones streaming music. I'm in my car or at work or jogging so 320kbps is "good enough" for me. But I'm sure the Steve Hoffman audiophiles will be all over this, or will be, when the Beatles, Beach Boys and Monkees are available.

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RichC2

Jay-Z created a $10 tier for standard quality audio. Spotify is fine by me.

While the consumer usually wins with competition, when it comes to streaming it becomes a bigger pain in the ass. Especially if companies like Apple release theirs, get exclusive contracts and make it only playable on their platforms.

Dan

This will do just about as well as Beats, if not a little worse in terms of subscriptions.
With the exception that Apple already bought Beats. Nobody's going to buy Tidal, and it's going to tank.

A-aron

So, Swift was angry that she wasn't getting enough money from services like Spotify - but this is ok? As more and more artists are added to the service, the slices of the pie get smaller and smaller - eventually keeping artists from joining in because the value is the same (or less) than other existing options.

Seems like a "grass is greener" thing here, and I wonder just how many people will pay $20/month for it. Sure, they offer HD video - but who is watching videos while they listen to music (while driving or exercising)?

RichC2

Calvin Harris is apparently a big part of it and since Swift is currently banging his brains out it seems logical she'd do what he does.

E Unit

Congrats and welcome to 2005 Jay-Z.

EddieMoney

Nicki Minaj is crazy, but I'd tit bang her until her spine severed.

A-aron

Glad to see you're feeling better, EM

PerryD

I'm using the free version of Spotify which is running at 160kbps, and it seems good enough for my $20 headphones at the office. I may upgrade someday though, just to remove the commercials, although this past week or two, I've hit a few patches where I get no commercials for hours, not sure why, it's always been reliably playing a couple commercials every 4 songs or so.