Okay, while my post’s title is identical to John H. Darko’s the exclamation points were mine. In short, MQA is BAD for consumers. First, it is a lossy format so it provides little to no new value to audio industry. Second, it is an attempt to extort licensing fees from consumers, manufactures and record producers. There is no win here except for the MQA developers. Schiit came out with the statement that they have no intention of supporting this schitty protocol and I applaud them for taking that stand. We should all take the same stand!!! John Darko has a post summarizing Schiit’s statement.
When you purchase music on a physical medium such as albums, tapes or CDs you have a perpetual license to listen to that music. In fact, several legal cases have given you the right to have a backup of this music. It gets a bit muddy around your rights to “RIP” the music from the medium to another format but it appears that you have this right as well. All said, if you purchase music on a physical medium you can listen to that on any device and as many as you wish. This is why I only purchase music on physical media or via DRM free digital vendors. MQA is another approach at ripping you and me off and we need to reject it.
