Emails from any of the best music streaming services tend to fall into one of two categories: news about a price increase or news about new features. But the email we received last night from Tidal doesn't belong to either guy, because it's an announcement of a big change that will go into effect next month.
Tidal says goodbye to two key formats, MQA and Sony's 360 Reality Audio.
Here's what Tidal has to say (not a long email):
On July 24, 2024, we will replace music in TIDAL's MQA catalog with FLAC versions. In addition to this change, we are removing all podcasts and music available in 360 Reality Audio.. Find out how these changes will affect your collection.
Tidal has decided to optimize its streaming and remove some file formats. The end of MQA support wasn't a huge surprise given that Tidal had already released a major FLAC update in August last year, and it now seems extremely unlikely that Tidal will be one of the companies to license MQA's successor, AIRIA. .
Tidal said it “has no further plans to change our audio format offerings.” But the end of support for Sony 360 Reality Audio (Sony's proprietary spatial audio offering) was more unexpected.
Why does Tidal call Sony's spatial audio sayonara?
The short answer: Dolby Atmos is where it's at. Tidal says it is focusing on Atmos due to “the number of supported devices, catalog availability, and artist adoption of the format.”
So what does this mean for your library?
Starting July 24, if you have MQA tracks in your collection, Tidal will automatically replace them with FLAC versions. Not all tracks will be replaced immediately, however: Tidal says FLAC versions of some tracks may not be available immediately or may not be high-resolution initially. While “we have at least 16-bit, 44.1kbps FLAC versions for almost all MQA tracks today, we may not have a replacement for each and every one of them.”
And starting on the same date, if your collection includes 360 Reality Audio tracks in your downloads or playlists, they will appear grayed out and you won't be able to select them for streaming.
The end of 360 Reality Audio support isn't the best news for people who have been enjoying it with headphones like Sony's pretty good WF-C700N, and it's even worse news for Sony: while the format is still supported with Deezer, live concert streamer nugs.net and Amazon Music, this is definitely a big loss for the format and a suggestion that 360 Reality Audio may join Betamax and Minidisc in Sony's archive of forgotten formats.
Spotify does not offer 360 Reality Audio and is not expected to do so on Spotify Hi-Fi, while Apple is already on board the Atmos train.
Tidal is, however, one of the few music platforms that actually reduced its prices in March 2024, so if you're looking for a new music streaming subscription that's shaking things up, it might be one to try…
