When I [posted earlier today about Neil Young pulling his music catalog from streaming services](https://loopinsight.com/2015/07/15/neil-young-is-pulling-his-music-from-streaming-services/) because of poor quality, I kept wondering why he would do that. Neil is right, quality does matter, but not at all costs.
I’ve talked to a lot of musicians, producers and engineers over the years and they all care about the quality of the music. Without exception, they all want the music to sound the very best it can.
However, consumers don’t really care. There are those that really, really do, but the vast majority of consumers don’t. They want good quality music that they can listen to whenever and wherever they want.
As far as I can tell, that’s what the streaming services available today provide for us. Convenient, good quality music.
Most streaming services even offer the option to boost the quality of your music, but there’s a cost to that too. I’ve tried this a number of times to see if I noticed a big difference—I didn’t. What I did notice is that my cellular data package went way up because I’m downloading high quality music that I don’t really need when I’m on the go.
I’m sorry, but that’s not worth it to me. I want to listen to Neil Young—and many other bands—but I don’t want to pay more to do it just because the artist wants it that way. I pay enough already.
Apple Music’s way of automatically increasing or decreasing the quality based on my connection suits me just fine.
There are more things for Neil and other artists to consider when talking about the quality of streaming services. I support the artists right to get paid for their work, but trying to dictate what quality the music is delivered seems a bit over the top to me.
I love you Neil, but you’re wrong on this one.
Perfectly put Jim.
Neil Young should try listening to DAB radio in the UK. Streaming is considerably better than that.
Totally with you, Jim. If only the makers of AM radio had followed this principle, too, so that as you leave the range of the radio waves you can still hear…
…oh, wait. You can.
I respect Neil Young, but this is crazy. I wonder if he’s losing his mind: He’s started to define himself more by what he hates than what he loves.
“Apple Music’s way of automatically increasing or decreasing the quality based on my connection suits me just fine.”
I never heard of this feature… Hmm… I’m usually hesitant to allow my library to be streamed over cellular data, and instead store my music on-device.
Does anyone know where I can learn about how Apple does this, and to what degree it scales down the bitrate on cellular data?
I don’t know that it’s documented, but you could probably measure it. Check how much data Music has used, play a few songs, then check again.
Having been in an indie band for a number of years, I can tell you that worrying about the quality of the stream is a luxury concern. If you were listening to our music at all, we were freaking pumped.
His discussion on Triangulation with Leo a month or two ago was interesting, I liked a lot of what he had to say. But you’re right, the decision on how to listen is ours, and he should respect that. I’ve purchased Neil on vinyl, cassette, digitally… I welcomed not having to deal with media by subscribing to Beats and now Apple Music, but I guess I’ll just have root out my old media and rip them.
Love his music but he is wrong on just about everything. 🙂
The quality of sound is a valid argument, as it is a valid argument when people complain about the sound quality of Apple Earpods / Earbuds, or Beats (pre or post Apple) audio headgear, and just about every other bottom of the bucket to top of the line equipment.
If you are sitting in an audio neutral, carefully controlled environment, then you may be able to hear the subtle differences in compression or streaming methods, or the differences between an Apple set of Buds supplied with a Phone or iPod and a set of Seinheisers.
I don’t. I wear pod or bud type ear-speakers when out and about walking the streets with lots of other ambient noise, or on the bus. Or I listen to mp3 type or streaming services while in the car via a phone streaming through a Bluetooth connection to the in-car system, again with all the associated road noise. And lets not even get started with my motorcycle in-helmet solution.
I’ve never sat in an audio neutral environment and purposefully chosen a set of headphones given away with a phone, or decided to stream music over a 3G data connection.
The thing that pisses me off more about the quality of (specifically) Apple earpods / earbuds is that they don’t stay in my ears when I’m walking the the dog.
I’m afraid I’m a bit of a cynic here. Young is trying to sell people on Ponos, a supposedly better than CD quality audio experience that no one can hear the difference in. This “decision” totally fits with that sales pitch.
“I care so much about audio quality I’m creating 2048-bit music files and players I can overcharge you for, and I’m cutting off streaming to show you how important that 2048-bit quality is.”
“I want to listen to Neil Young—and many other bands—but I don’t want to pay more to do it just because the artist wants it that way. I pay enough already.”
Entitled much? Why do you think you or I have the right to listen to any artist’s music on any streaming service? We don’t – it’s their music to control as they wish assuming they’ve not ceded control to a label.
Sorry, but I get a little tired of people feeling they have some inherent claim on an artist’s creative work. Neil may well be wrong to do this, but it’s his choice and to say you ‘pay enough’ just makes you sound cheap. If his music was truly important to you, you could buy it.
Audiophiles are so cute when they claim they represent everybody.
Good opinion but a little flawed.
It’s not that people don’t care about what they listen to, its that, as you said, they can’t usually tell.
“However, consumers don’t really care”
They do but….
“to see if I noticed a big difference—I didn’t.”
That, in a nutshell, is the real reason.
Depends on what kind of music, if it’s hip hop and rap, what would be the purpose, a pig with a ribbon is still a pig!
It seems a little odd to me that Neil Young, of all musicians, would take up optimal sound quality as a personal cause (or perhaps the term is obsession). Young’s music in recent years — since “Living With War,” I’d say — has taken on a kind of rough-edged, stomping, straight-from-the-garage sound that doesn’t really require audiophile gear to appreciate. It seems to want to be cranked up and blasted through whatever gear you’ve got. It was Young himself who chose to release that album first as a 192kbps download from his website — and he seemed to have no qualms about audio fidelity at the time. His interest was in getting the music out there to listeners as widely and quickly as possible — and I still think that’s a laudable goal.
Besides which, I personally have never been able to discern a real difference between a 256kbps AAC rip and a FLAC or Apple Lossless copy of the same track. Maybe it’s my ears, maybe it’s my audio equipment (which is really pretty good), but in any case, it seems weird that as a listener, I should be told that I can ONLY hear what the artist intended at a very high, seemingly arbitrary level of technical specs. In my own experience, that simply isn’t true.
I’m not sure how any artist that has released music on audio cassette can be that worried about streaming quality. I’ve never really listened to Neil Young and probably won’t now as it won’t be available. Plenty of other stuff to discover though.
Neil Young and Apple. Just read the first couple of paragraphs of Chapter 16 of Becoming Steve Jobs and you’ll see this goes back a long time. Neil has always been an LP guy and didn’t like the digital quality that started with CDs. He criticized Apple for using a compressed format on the iPod, which didn’t go over so well with Steve Jobs.
From the book, Neil wanted to give Steve all the new copies of his LPs that were remastered as a piece offering. Steve’s response: “Fuck Neil Young and fuck his records.”
Don’t forget Neil Young has some skin in the game with his Pono Player. He’s pushing higher than CD quality music for a premium price. Either he doesn’t want to look like a hypocrite or he’s putting his money where his mouth is. I wouldn’t be surprised of we saw a Pono streaming service in the future. Then we’ll really see streaming music not make money.
Did Neil Young ever let his music play on FM (where it gets the shit compressed out of it)?
Well said Jim. At the end of the day it’s his music, and if he wants to limit his listening audience to people who are willing to overpay for his Pono player and the associated $25 hi-def album downloads then I guess that’s his choice. It’s not my choice though, and that’s the problem. I don’t need any artist, successful or otherwise, telling me how I should listen to their music. They should be happy I’m even listening to it in the grand scheme of things.
Also, it seems rather hypocritical to claim that the music I access via a streaming service, or download to my iPhone via a streaming service (Apple Music in my case), is somehow inferior to that same music if purchased from iTunes or elsewhere. In the case of Apple, it’s exactly the same. It’s 256 Kbps AAC if I buy it, and it’s 256 Kbps AAC if I download it to my device from Apple Music. Hell, with iOS 9 I can even stream at 256 Kbps if that’s something I want to use my data on. So if I can buy it at the same bitrate that I can stream it, then how is one inferior to the other?
And how about radio? Hardly a high-def audio experience there.
I think Neil needs to go back to supporting causes that actually mean something as opposed to trying to force his personal opinions about music clarity on his listening audience. If I can’t listen to Neil on Apple Music I’ll just listen to something else. If he really cared about people hearing his music, he’d let them consume it as they see fit, not as he sees fit.
Neil Young has been on a campaign for decades to fight the lousy quality of music on the radio, and the reduction in quality in CDs (see Loudness Wars). It’s not, I suspect, that he wants to dictate to you the level of quality you can listen to. Buy the CD and rip it if that’s what you want. But he’s throwing his weight behind trying to force the music industry to improve the quality of the source material we have access to.
That being said, there may be a solution on the horizon that will satisfy you and Neil. Meridian has a new technology for improving the quality of music, without increasing its size. It’s called MQA, and uses research in psycho-acoustics to see how the ear and brain actually responds to music in terms of quality of the sound. And when you have an MQA enabled device, it uses the MQA encoding to give you that improved quality. But any device that’s not compatible gives you full CD quality. Or the best quality the file offers. It works with FLAC, AAC and MP3.
So far only Meridian makes a device that does the decoding, and costs $199. But nothing is stopping anyone from adding it to their music and devices (license of course being required). All the big music labels have embraced it and are going to add it to their files. Tidal will be streaming it soon.
Maybe it will happen. I hope Neil adds MQA to his Pono player. That’s been pretty popular, and they have a great music store (in terms of content, not functionality).
We should have an OPTION to listen to HQ music! Apple Music quality doesn’t even compare to the tracks bought from iTunes. I have unlimited data and I want to stream the high quality version!
Nonsense. They are pretty affordable compared to the competition in FLAC players. And it has the same designer of the DAC as the top $1,500 FLAC player with almost identical performance, for one-third the price. Or a hundred or two more than an iPod. You’re sounding like a PC users slamming Macs.
As for the idea that no one can hear a difference, that’s not established by legitimate science. And those who have one knows it sounds way better than from an iPod, or streaming.
But you also have to have a high-quality set of headphones. My Blue MoFis make ANY device sound better. But the high end? It’s as good as anything I’ve ever listened to regardless of price.
As are the deniers.
Bingo! 🙂
It’s certainly not for me. I wouldn’t listen to most hip hop for any price.
I’m not certain how it all works, but wouldn’t you be streaming the highest quality version that your bandwidth would allow? i.e. Apple music adjust the quality to prevent buffering when the signal is lower/slower?
I read that the sound quality on apple music is the same a download from itunes, if thats correct Neil should remove his music from itunes as well
You made a bunch of claims about audibility of various things; please cite your sources. And “Stereophile” or “The Absolute Sound” magazines don’t count.
Hi Neil!
If it works how iTunes Radio worked before it, iOS knows when you’re on cellular and cuts the bitrate back so as not to summarily consume your data plan.
Beats Music had an option to always stream high-quality audio; Apple Music so far does not. (Though if you know what you want to listen to, you can easily work around it by downloading.)
Seems weird to me, too, even as someone who has both AAC and FLAC/ALAC/”HD” copies of the same music in his library. Mr. Young’s tilting at windmills.
Look at where people are streaming; they’re not critical listening environments. You’re never going to notice the difference. And even the worst streaming service still sounds a hell of a lot better than modern SiriusXM’s murky disaster of “high-quality audio.”
90% of my own streaming time is in the kitchen, playing from the iPhone’s built-in speaker. You really think I’m going to notice or care, Neil?
Take this quiz and let’s see how you do.
http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
No, it’s not scientifically infallible, but its results are pretty interesting nonetheless.
http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/09/412271433/audio-quality-quiz-results-you-did-slightly-better-than-guessing-randomly
Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people that CAN hear the sound difference, and to those people, I hope they’re happy paying more for higher quality streaming music. But for the majority of the world, there’s simply no benefit.
It’s not that weird. Neil wants PONOS to make him even richer. That’s it.
I love Neil as well, but somehow I feel like I should rip my CDs at 16Kbps to simulate FM radio.
It also depends on your audio system. If you have a $2000 or more equipment, you notice difference. The better your system, the more the difference.
For on-the-go listening, earphones, mobile devices, high-quality streaming is just a marketing tool.
The average Jobs’ elegance, I’d say.