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Tidal is something of the gold standard for high-quality music streaming, though it’s not quite as popular as Apple Music. What makes it a great platform is the wide range of audio formats you can enjoy. While that’s the case, Tidal announced that it’s removing a few audio formats from the platform.
To catch you up, Tidal is a platform with a bunch of music from several genres. However, what makes it stand out is its focus on high-quality music. The platform streams audio at up to 24-bit, 192kHz. It even gets past the annoying audio limitation that Android has. Unlike YouTube Music and Spotify, there’s no free plan; if you want to listen to music, you have to pay.
The basic single-person plan costs $10.99/month and a family plan costs $16.99/month. You can get it for $4.99/month if you’re a student. If you’re interested in trying it out, you can get a free trial.
Tidal is removing some audio formats
Tidal streams in a myriad of formats including lossless FLAC. One of the formats that the platform supports is MQA (Master Quality Authentication). Well, according to the Tidal support page, the company will stop supporting MQA files on July 24th.
That’s a bummer for people who prefer that platform, but Tidal has chosen a replacement. Going forward, the company will use FLAC as the replacement format. The reason that Tidal gave is the fact that FLAC is an open-source format. “…any artist can deliver their music in high quality directly to TIDAL without the involvement of a third party,” the support page said.
The company is also getting rid of another format which is 360 Reality Audio. Again, the company chose a replacement. Going forward, the company will use Dolby Atmos audio for the immersive audio.
How this will affect your collection
If you’re used to streaming in MQA, you’re in luck. All of the MQA tracks will be replaced with the highest-quality FLAC versions. As for your downloaded MQA tracks, you’ll need to update the app on July 24th. After that point, you’ll be prompted to re-download the tracks in FLAC.
However, if you listen to 360 Reality Audio tracks, then you’ll be out of luck. All of those tracks will be grayed out and unavailable to stream. This will also happen with your downloaded tracks.
Just know that some MQA tracks may not have a FLAC replacement. So, you should expect some gaps in your library.