I would call that "little" revenue, not no revenue. Regardless, it is common in format making to give away the technology initially until it gets adopted. It solves the chicken and egg problem. Companies don't want to pay to create a market for someone else. But if it is free, some will deploy it.
I'd call it "pathetic". My nearest family owned hifi dealer isn't exactly profitable on way more revenue than that. The second nearest does a bit better, and sells a lot of NAD and Bluesound - more in the years since MQA came out - so potentially has made more out of MQA than the developer, to put things in perspective. The business plan for too many startups seems to be to spend other people's money on new things. SCL6 hype didn't bring any new value, it seems - it took me a little while to see through that hype as well.
I'd be prepared to guess that we can work out how much money Lenbrook would have paid any other owner in royalties and other costs over the next few years, based on what they are paying in the acquisition and salaries. Also I'd guess that they were MQA's largest hardware royalties customer, at least among the committed supporters, which appears now to truly number only Lenbrook, 2L and some journalists.
While there are still some MQA true believers out there, it appears that Tidal has a great chance of surviving the move away, but the number of subscriptions they lose when people can't get MQA any more will tell. I guess they know the numbers, and that subscribers have ditched MQA there for the lower tier over the years as the bad publicity won out. It would be good if Tidal has to improve its service and especially its apps to keep market share, but I suspect a lot of its streaming goes through Tidal Connect apps, and that is where Lenbrook could have impact as a large provider there as well. If they say "MQA or we discontinue Tidal Connect", what then? MQA is not over yet, and the endgame could be more damage for the industry than anything that has happened so far, given that it's really been a storm in a teacup.
Do we know any numbers for the major record companies, particularly Universal? Will they have learned much from this?
