Tidal has announced – according to this post from What Hi-Fi – that it will start streaming High Res FLAC, which does make the future of MQA very uncertain.
It now really seems only a matter of time before MQA disappears into the history books of obscure file formats. Tidal, which chose MQA as its standard hi-res format has announced that it will soon begin streaming high-res files in lossless FLAC quality. With the caveat that listeners can also curb its quality if they wish to avoid excessive data traffic. Which in turn comes in handy with mobile use.
For now, the “old” MQA streams will also remain available. But for how long is unclear. It is also not yet known how long it takes before the high res FLAC streams are launched at Tidal. Once the switch to FLAC for high-res is a fact though, MQA on paper does not have much of a right to exist anymore, Tidal was the main player as far as supply is concerned.
NOTE: Correction: we are talking about high-res FLAC files. Ordinary CD-quality FLAC, Tidal has been streaming for some time.