Music streamer Tidal has announced that FLAC will be the first file format used in its apps, which is not entirely illogical.
Since the demise of MQA, Tidal has been busy converting its catalog to FLAC. That process is still in full swing, recently the first batch of 6 million FLAC tracks became available to listeners. We read on What-HiFi that Tidal has also changed the file format preference in the Tidal apps. That has now become HiRes FLAC > MQA > Standard FLAC > AAC. This order applies even if an MQA-capable DAC is connected, then too the first choice remains HiRes FLAC. Only when MQA is available but no HiRes FLAC version of a specific track MQA will be used.
We wonder what will happen when all MQA tracks are converted to FLAC. Although Tidal has promised to support MQA (for now), a duplicate database of music files is obviously going to be an expensive and ultimately pointless situation down the line.