Amazon's Branding Tack Like Other Hi-Res Audio Streaming Services' Proprietary Turn
Amazon chose not to call its high-resolution music service "Hi-Res" because the terms hi-fi and hi-res aren't widely understood by consumers, and different countries use different terms to describe CD-quality-and-higher music, industry officials told us. Instead, Amazon’s Music HD offers…
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what it calls 50 million High Definition songs and “millions” in Ultra High Definition. Though the major music companies, RIAA and the Recording Academy, developed the logo "Hi-Res Music," the name is generally used to describe the overall music category. Individual streaming services differentiate their brands with their own names for hi-res offerings. Lenbrook brand Bluesound, which Amazon didn't single out (see 1909170055) in Tuesday's announcement that mentioned Sonos and Sound United, came Wednesday. It, too, is compatible with Amazon Music HD -- and an early adopter. Bob Stuart, creator of the Master Quality Authenticated audio codec, welcomed Amazon's "offering better sound quality to a wide audience," saying, "for too long the mainstream diet of MP3 quality has degraded the listener’s enjoyment." Amazon is "restoring to at least Redbook (44.1 kHz/16b) quality and raising expectations of quality," Stuart said. He said any service that’s streaming FLAC, which Amazon Music HD does, "can rapidly upgrade to MQA in the future." MQA technology delivers higher than HD quality in a 1.3 Mbps stream, he said.