This month, Apple Music strengthened its footing as one of the industry’s top streaming platforms. In a major step forward, the service brings lossless audio to its catalog of over 75 million on-demand songs, as well as support for Dolby Atmos—at no extra cost to subscribers.
Spatial Audio & Dolby Atmos Support
Spatial audio through Dolby Atmos is a fully immersive listening experience. Atmos enables mixers to place sounds all around and above listeners for a truly revolutionary way to consume music. From now forward, Apple Music will play back Dolby Atmos-enabled songs on all newer generation AirPods and Beats, as well as on the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers.
Dolby Atmos for music is still in its infancy, so the Spatial Audio catalog on Apple Music will grow as Atmos mixes become available. Apple promises to curate special playlists to make finding your favorite music, in a brand new format, quick and easy. Any song or album mixed in Atmos will also have a badge next to it indicating that. There are currently thousands of songs ready to go, with more added regularly.
The introduction of Spatial Audio on a major streaming platform is a huge step forward. Apple and Dolby together also support initiatives which include doubling the number of Atmos-ready studios in major markets, so more and more artists and mixers can take advantage of the burgeoning technology. Spatial Audio is the future of music, with the movement spearheaded by Apple and Dolby.
Lossless Audio on Apple Music
The 75 million plus songs on the platform will also be available in Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) format for the highest quality listening experience. This preserves all of the original audio file so consumers can hear exactly what the artist and engineers created in the studio.
Subscribers can navigate to Settings > Music > Audio Quality where they’ll be able to choose their playback quality, all the way up to 24-bit/192 kHz for hi-resolution lossless audio.
Find out more here.