It’s really not at all like that. In the event that Tidal start charging extra for access to their MQA Masters library, I will simply move to another streaming service that satisfies my musical tastes. Neither MQA hi-res or standard hi-res files are essentials for me but they are nice to have because generally they sound subtly better than their 16bit equivalents. As was mentioned by Tim Jordan in his post above, MQA content is a freebie on Tidal, and as long as it continues to be so I will take advantage of it because on my systems and to my ears it sounds pretty good.
I just can’t understand why some people are so obsessed about the need to oppose MQA in any form. I can sort of get the issue related to DRM, although I personally don’t see this as huge issue. What I just cannot understand is the insistence by some people that it is simply impossible for MQA encoded material to sound good - a point of view with which I cannot agree.
Some people insist blind that modern DACs sound exactly the same, and won’t be convinced that this is most certainly not the case. I have heard people claim that if an expensive DAC sounds better than cheaper DACs it is almost certainly because the expensive DAC has been deliberately made less accurate than the cheaper DACs. Others (just look at some other forums) are convinced that all amplifiers sound the same. My experience and subjective opinion is that amplifiers can sound very different. You may have an opposing opinion.
So many aspects of music and music replay are subjective. Modern audio replay system nowadays are often no more than a fashion accessory, or like Sonus are purchased because of their convenience. However, those few people who buy decent audio replay systems don’t care too much about out and out specifications. Most people want to know and hear how a system sounds before they purchase it.
Many of the Tidal MQA masters sound subtly better than their 16bit equivalents (where identical masters are used) to me on my systems. It’s not rocket science and its neither a religion nor an addiction!