How much is MQA conversion?

The licensing agreements between the resellers (Tidal) and those who own the rights to the copyrighted material tend to be private. One thing is certain, however, you can be sure that once a full implementation of the sound "degrading system" MQA represents is in place, the cost of the "family jewels" or "authentic" version will go up. That is essentially the complete rationale for the entire MQA exercise - produce various grades of sound quality from the original master file (typically 192khz/24 bit digital encoding format) and sell the highest quality to the highest bidder. Those who don't want to pay the cost of special licensed MQA players and the price for premium streaming services can still get the recording for less cost in what amounts to an MP3 format.

Wouldn’t Tidal offer standard 16/44 FLAC files as an alternative to MQA?

Tidal does offer different resolutions for the same album in some of the more popular recordings. You kind of have to dig around, though.
B

" Wouldn’t Tidal offer standard 16/44 FLAC files as an alternative to MQA? " - CAMB

Sure. But for how long?

You have to understand that what is being attempted by a few large record companies represents and industry paradigm shift - a shift that has absolutely nothing to do with sound quality and everything to do with marketing, profitability, and control. Alternatives to MQA surely exist now. However, if the industry that produces and distributes recordings through physical media or streaming changes how it operates overnight by adopting a proprietary, heavily encrypted/secured coding standard, alternative choices regarding file type, access, and sound quality can also dry up overnight. At present, you have an "open source" standard in which the gradations from highest quality (192khz/24 bit) to MP3 are transparent to both equipment manufacturers and end users alike. If MQA were to become the "new industry standard", then it changes to a closed proprietary system where everything is licensed and controlled by the gatekeeper or in this case, the content copyright holder. It essentially becomes an end to end monopoly where one entity maintains full control over not only the content but the means by which that content can be rendered. If you don't like the sound quality of any particular level of content rendering - whether it's their top line "family jewels" version offering or the cheap "mp3" version, you're stuck with whatever the copyright holder gives you. In other words, the sound quality limitations are controlled by the content copyright holder from end to end. Independent third parties have absolutely no say in the matter of improving the ability of the rendering hardware to provide a more ideal fidelity version or to effectively manipulate the data stream to achieve certain ancillary goals such as room EQ. correction. A closed, (non open source) content delivery system can bring with it a complete shift in the music reproduction industry that can dramatically alter technological progress in the marketplace.