Track-dependent decoding

In one embodiment, a method includes reading, using a plurality of read sensors of a magnetic head in a read channel of a tape drive, encoded data from a plurality of tracks of a magnetic tape medium simultaneously. Also, the method includes monitoring statistics for the read channel, the statistics monitored for the read channel including exponentially averaged mean squared error (MSE) or signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for each simultaneously read track. Moreover, the method includes performing track-dependent erasure decoding on the encoded data based on detection of one or more time-varying signal quality issues associated with at least one of the plurality of tracks read simultaneously from the magnetic tape medium. The one or more time-varying signal quality issues are determined based on side information about reliability of detected bytes within C1 codewords of each simultaneously-read track.