Apple Music to upgrade to lossless audio and offer ‘Spatial Audio’ streams

Up to this point, very few music streaming services have offered lossless audio. Apple Music, YouTube Music and Spotify all offer ‘high quality’ streaming options, which usually means 320Kbps MP3 files, while Tidal stood alone offering a lossless audio tier. Now, Apple Music is jumping on that wagon and will begin offering higher quality audio streams. 

Today, Apple Music officially announced that it is bringing lossless quality options to its entire catalogue, which includes over 75 million songs. Apple is also adding support for Spatial Audio, so Dolby Atmos headphone users will get a bit more out of their listening experience. Spatial Audio will also work on AirPods and Beats headphones.

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While lossless audio will be coming to all songs on Apple Music, Spatial Audio will be a case-by-case basis, starting off with a few artists that have mastered albums in Dolby Atmos format. From there, Apple will be looking to consistently add new ‘Spatial Audio’ tracks and albums on a regular basis.

As 9to5Mac points out, Apple Music’s big upgrade should go live soon, likely next month alongside iOS 14.6.

KitGuru Says: I can see why lossless audio quality wasn’t a day-one feature, after all, high quality audio is a niche interest and streaming it takes up a lot of bandwidth. Still, it is nice to see Apple Music finally making the jump and bringing improvements for those who have invested in high-end audio gear. 

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