This week marks the 40th anniversary of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, a ground-breaking double album that stands as one of the most iconic and influential rock records of all time. Perhaps fittingly, the ultimate rhythm and blues band has also stretched its wings across the streaming universe this week, now available through several streaming services, including lossless streaming music service, Tidal.
Reported by The Verge, the exclusive contract Zeppelin signed with Spotify in 2013 expired this week, opening up a glut of options. The band’s entire discography is now available for streaming on Beats Music, Google Play Music, Xbox Music, Deezer, Rdio, Rhapsody, Tidal, and others. Before 2013, it was nearly as hard to find the band online as the Beatles, whose music has yet to make an appearance in streaming form.
For Zeppelin purists, perhaps the best news is the arrival of the catalog on Tidal, which streams music in CD-quality resolution (16bit/44.1kHz). That’s a big get, allowing later generations who missed the era of those little plastic discs to hear one of the most legendary bands of all time without massive MP3 compression, which cuts out around 90 percent of a track’s musical data.
Whether or not that’s reason enough to double-up your streaming subscription fees to $20/month is another question, but the service that Jay-Z is attempting to acquire for $56 million is increasingly becoming more alluring. Either way, if you’ve never heard Physical Graffiti in its entirety, or perhaps have taken a step away from the forefathers of modern rock, it’s as good a time as any to jump in and get the Led out.
Updated 3/4/2015: This piece previously stated that Jay-Z’s bid to acquire Tidal’s parent company, Aspiro, had failed. We have since been contacted by Tidal’s representatives who claim the bid through Jay-Z’s company Project Panther Bidco remains in play and will not be decided upon until later this month, though they would not comment further.
However, a press release (via Google translator) from a minority shareholder group looking to block the acquisition had this to say: “A consistent view of all registered shareholders is that they believe that the bid is bad and (doesn’t) sufficiently value the company’s potential.” For now, it appears the bid may be on hold. We’ll update these events when more facts become available.
