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Apple Music Now Home to Exciting Full Lossless Audio

In a not-too-surprising announcement, Apple revealed Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos coming to a full catalog of Lossless Audio streaming.

Credit | How-To Geek

Thanks to an announcement from Apple, we have learned that Lossless Audio, in addition to a bunch of other capitalized adjectives and nouns, are coming to Apple Music in June fo this year. In a blow to top competitor Spotify, Apple has now placed itself in the forefront of HD quality audio streaming, even with alternative services providing lossless.

Amazon Prime Music, for example, just released the Amazon Music HD subscription at no additional cost to current Music Unlimited subscribers. At just $7.99/month for Prime members or $9.99/month for other customers, Amazon’s attempting to push its service into the same spotlight as same-priced Apple Music or slightly more expensive Spotify.

Apple’s announcement comes in the middle of a race to provide high fidelity audio to consumers at a low price. Once only possible through physical media or an expensive service such as Tidal ($19.99/month and now owned by Square), lossless audio has become a major goalpost for the big streaming competitors.

Digital Audio
From monopoly to underdog to leader

Apple’s iTunes was once the leading music streaming service, although it quickly fell off as the software’s desktop focus didn’t apply to the growing crowd of on-the-go music listeners. Spotify took the lead from there, blasting away with hundreds of millions of subscribers.

Add in their growing userbase, advanced features, algorithmic music recommendations, money-making technology, and more, and iTunes was quickly drowned. That was before its revival as Apple Music which only offered single track purchases for quite a while. After Apple’s introduction of Apple Music’s streaming service, it quickly grew, thanks in part to the integration and cheaper price over Spotify’s offerings.

Now, they’re speeding past Spotify, thanks in part to the $2 trillion powerhouse Apple is. Although Spotify announced their HiFi plans first, which Statural covered here, it seems as though Apple actually beat them to it. That’s definitely a feat considering that Spotify has had several more years and more want to invest into HD music..

What is Lossless Audio?

Lossless Audio is Apple’s capitalized version of lossless quality, or oftentimes CD-quality. Using the company’s proprietary ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), every single bit of a song’s original audio file is copied and transmitted. As Apple describes it, “Apple Music subscribers will be able to hear the exact same thing that the artists created in the studio.”

There’s a more indepth explanation here, although it pretty much just means that the whole range and volume of a track will be audible. Usual streaming involves lossy quality, which removes some extra volume, high ends, or bass, in order to reduce streaming sizes, although it seems that doesn’t matter as much.

In addition to Lossless Audio, Apple Music announced the launch of Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos on the service. Spatial Audio is yet another proprietary Apple name, providing spatial awareness through specific audio techniques. I’ll be completely honest and admit that I don’t know what exactly it does, although I know the end result is a 360 degree audio experience.

Dolby Atmos is virtually the same, although it’s the provider of the software behind Spatial Audio. Atmos has been a leading audio qualification within the movie and speaker industry for a while, as it provides some of the highest-def, accurate, and effective 3D audio out there.

It’s great that Apple is launching all three of these together, as they’re all things that Apple Music fans have wanted for a while. Spatial Audio has even been on iOS for a few months, although limited to movies and TV shows with the qualification. Adding it, alongside Dolby Atmos and Lossless Audio can seriously turn Apple Music into a great provier of audiophile and newbie level music streaming.

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Apple Integration

As always, Apple is tying these additions straight into your iPhone, instead of just with the app. By default, Apple Music will play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats with an H1 or W1 chip, in addition to over the speakers within the newest versions of Apple products.

The company says over 20 million songs will be available in Lossless Audio at launch, with the service’s full 75 million songs available by the end of the year. Apple will be releasing new Dolby Atmos integrated tracks everyday, in addition to some specially curated Dolby Atmos playlists. I’d assume it’s to help show off the power of Dolby and Spatial Audio tech, although who knows.

Anyway, Spatial Audio, Dolby Atmos, and Lossless Audio will be available starting June 2021, on iOS 14.6, iPadOS 14.6, macOS 11.4, and tvOS 14.6. I’d definitely recommend checking it out if you’re an audiophile or already have Apple Music.

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