I don't know if the world is ready for this kind of thing. As an audiophile I think it is great that we're going to get access to a trove of lossless music, but I think the majority who is happy listening to music through their iPhone earphones and tinny speakers in their smartphones won't care (especially not enough to pay double the cost of a Spotify subscription).

Then there is the kind of internet speed required to stream lossless music. For those who have FLAC's in their music collection know that an album is hundreds of megabytes compared to a V0 rip which is only usually around the 75 to 100mb mark (depending on length and tracks). Now imagine streaming a track that is upwards of 20mb+? Here in Australia we have poor internet, we're ranked pretty low. I already struggle to stream 320kbps from Spotify Premium on my connection. The story is the same in New Zealand and other parts of the world. Then you have the bandwidth limitation, a lossless streaming platform would chew through potentially gigabytes of data (in Australia we still have bandwidth caps and we get speed limited or charged extra for going over them).

Then there is the subject of modern music production. Sad to say it, but most modern music is so overproduced and compressed during the mixing stage that it doesn't matter if you're listening to a 128kbps MP3 or lossless, it won't sound any better. Most music is destroyed in the studio before it is even released, therefore not worthy of listening to in any high bitrate format. If you want to debate this, I implore you to read up on "the loudness wars" in which it has been pretty documented that music is getting louder and the louder it gets, the lower the quality is (as the dynamics and peaks are stripped out).

I think Tidal is great, but I am very sceptical that it will address the issues people currently have with Spotify, more specifically how it pays out royalties. I do think there is a serious lack of strong music platforms that encourage discovery. As great as Spotify is, it doesn't let me fluidly discover new music. Rather I find myself clicking through related artists which feels counter-intuitive considering how much music and music data there is out there. Tidal very much comes across to me as a platform built by a rich music industry hotshot, backed by equally big and established artists who have sold millions.

I would love to see the idea of a VIP backstage feature incorporated into a platform like this. You can pay a monthly subscription fee to subscribe to an artist and in return get access to a members only area with exclusive early release music, discount merchandise, pre-release concert tickets, a chat feature/Q&A and other member only private features. I think something like that could work really well for large groups like One Direction and artists like Justin Bieber especially. Seems like a logic additional revenue stream for large and small artists alike.

It is a really nice idea, coupled with the exclusives component as well, but I just don't think the majority cares enough about music quality as a select few do. Most people cannot probably even hear the difference between lossless and a 320 MP3 (especially considering they're listening on prosumer equipment like iPhones and MacBooks). I would definitely use this if it had some classic artists on here, 60's/70's rock and blues that wasn't overproduced and would sound great lossless (like Led Zeppelin's earlier material or The Beatles especially).

Metallica's Death Magnetic album - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Magnetic#Criticism_regard... is definitely not going to sound any better if it finds its way onto the Tidal platform, that is for sure.