Bratelund says that Tidal is already working with Meridian to adopt MQA, which enables the more effective packaging of high-resolution music files so they can be streamed without using up huge amounts of bandwidth, which has previously been the barrier to high-res music streaming.
"The technology is there, now it's about securing content rights for high-res music, which is a whole different game from Red Book CD quality," says Bratelund.
So how much will the new high-res streaming service cost? "Price remains to be negotiated, it's quite likely that lossless (CD) streaming will be commoditised and the price will drop a little bit and high-res will sit above that. But I don't think we'll see a doubling of the price again [from the current £20/month for CD streaming]. It might be quite a nice offering."
Bratelund also confirmed that Tidal has a growing number of partnerships with hardware manufacturers, including Bluesound, Simple Audio, Meridian, Logitech, Sonos (currently testing it in beta), Linn, McIntosh and Wadia. Meridian added Tidal streaming to its Sooloos system earlier this month, and Linn has done the same for its DS network players.
We awarded Meridian MQA a Stars of CES 2015 honour in recognition of the impact we believe it will have on helping bring high-res streaming to market.
MORE: Read our full Tidal review
