Streaming Archives

Free music from your local library

05/10/2024

There can’t be many of us who aren’t having to think about personal and household budgets in these difficult times following the COVID-19 pandemic and everything that has followed. So, here is a reminder that for many of us in the UK there is a wealth of free audio available usually only a short trip away from home or available online at your local library. Despite local authority cuts to library services in recent years […]

What are the best music streaming deals for couples?

25/04/2024

High Resolution Audio’s guide to getting the best couples deals for your musical entertainment. What are the best music streaming deals for couples? Updated 25/04/2024 to reflect recent Spotify subscription increases. Deezer, Qobuz and Spotify have realised that not every one is a singleton or has a family and have come up with ‘Duo’ deals for couples. The pricing for these plans comes about half way between an individual and family subscription. In the UK […]

What is the best music streaming family plan?

23/04/2024

High Resolution Audio’s guide to getting the best family plan for your musical entertainment. What is the best music streaming family plan? Updated 23/04/2024 to reflect recent TIDAL and Spotify price plan changes. The top contenders for best music streaming deals for families all of which offer up to 6 individual accounts are Amazon Music, Apple Music, Qobuz and TIDAL. Amazon Music when combined with an Amazon Prime subscription will also give you video streaming, […]

Streaming

What is the best free music streaming service?

29/01/2024

High Resolution Audio’s guide to getting the best free streaming for your musical entertainment. What is the best free music streaming service? No one quite knows the origin of the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’ but this applies to music streaming much like most other things in life. Most of the free offerings come with some sort of restriction such as ads, reduced audio quality, limited features such as no skipping or […]

SOURCE: RIAA – The Rise and Fall of CD sales volumes in US 1983-2022 feat

The Rise and Fall of the Compact Disc

21/06/2023

The first commercial Compact Disc (CD) was released in 1982 and the CD was planned as the successor to the vinyl record. Developed by Philips and Sony, sales of CDs grew quickly and by 2004 cumulative worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs and 200 billion by 2007. However, from the beginning of the early 2000s CDs were increasingly being replaced by other forms of digital storage and distribution […]

Qobuz Review

08/01/2022

History Qobuz was launched in 2008 and has achieved a series of notable firsts. In 2009 it offered the first CD quality download catalogue and in 2011 the first CD quality streaming service. It was the first online music service to adopt 24bit HiRes in its catalogue and in the summer of 2015, it launched HiRes Streaming with its Qobuz Sublime+ subscription. During the past few years Qobuz has positioned itself as a top end […]

Idagio Review

02/01/2022

History Launched in August 2015 the name ‘IDAGIO’ was formed from ‘I’ for tech start-ups, and ‘adagio’, the tempo marking in music that means ‘slowly, leisurely’ according to Till Janczukowicz, the services co-founder. In September 2018 the streamer claimed 250,000 registered users but the number of paying subscribers is unknown. IDAGIO has partnered with all the major classical music labels including Warner Classics and Deutsche Grammophon to provide classical music enthusiasts with access a wide […]