Shortly after announcing a price bump, Tidal brings new features to its HiFi Plus subscribers with FLAC support.
Tidal is rolling out HiRes FLAC support for its Early Access program on iOS. “HiFi Plus subscribers have always had access to our highest resolution audio, and now we are offering hi-resolution content in FLAC format, up to 24-bit, 192kHz. Try it not by updating your beta app and selecting ‘Max’ quality in the new Audio & Playback settings screen,” the announcement post reads. For now, Android users will have to wait for the broader roll out of the feature to experience FLAC listening.
The FLAC format has been around since 2001, but Tidal embraced a proprietary hi-res audio format called Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), and now the company behind it has sought bankruptcy protection earlier this year. Despite the MQA codec requiring a licensing fee to use, MQA has made almost no money since its inception in 2015, with more than 130 licensing agreements in place.
The switch to FLAC for Tidal has been hinted at in HiFi communities around the internet for several months now. Following the news of MQA’s bankruptcy proceedings, Tidal CEO Jesse Dorogusker all but confirmed this move back in April with a comment on reddit.
“We will soon introduce high-resolution FLAC to our HiFi Plus subscribers. It’s lossless and an open standard. It’s a large file, but we will allow users to up or downgrade the resolution depending on the situation.” While MQA uses significantly less data than FLAC, it appears this proprietary standard’s biggest supporter has backed out. Tidal says it’s choosing FLAC as its preferred format, but will “continue to support multiple formats to make sure we have as much hi-res content as possible.”
There are now over 6 million tracks available to stream in HiRes FLAC format on Tidal. The DSP says it is actively working with distributors, labels, and artists to add more content to the format every day.
Welcome to 2001, Tidal.