As the competition among streaming platforms intensifies, Apple Music becomes the latest service to offer HiFi audio.
The rumors are true. After months of speculation, Apple announced this week that it’s bringing both spatial audio with Dolby Atmos and lossless audio to its music streaming service in June.
News of Apple Music‘s pending update is not surprising. The company has been leaning into spatial audio for some time, with both AirPods Pro and AirPods Max utilizing the technology. For the uninformed, Dolby Atmos is a format that allows creatives to mix music in a more immersive way. It’s sort of like creating a sound bubble around you. The nice thing is that so long as you have Apple headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, you’re good to go. So long as a track is recorded in Atmos and you have the hardware to support spatial audio, Apple Music will automatically play the highest-level quality. That goes for the built-in speakers on the latest iPhones, iPad, and Macs as well.
Apple’s HiFi streaming will feature 16-bit at 44.1 kHz or standard CD-quality audio. That can also go up to 24 bit at 48 kHz on Apple devices. It’s also offering hi-resolution lossless audio that maxes out at 24 bit at 192 kHz. Interestingly, Apple is also using ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), which it made open source back in 2011. Once it launches, you can enable it by going to Settings > Music > Audio Quality.
The biggest surprise of Apple’s latest announcement is that HiFi streaming will be available to Apple Music users at no additional cost. That approach runs counter to the rest of the streaming market. Other services tack on an extra charge for lossless audio, including Spotify’s upcoming HiFi tier. Additional HiFi streaming services—Qobuz, Deezer, Amazon Music HD—also cost more and have weaker catalogs, with the majority priced at $15 a month and Tidal Masters costing $20 per month.
HiFi is having a moment. The question is whether or not the addition of HiFi streaming will convince consumers to switch to Apple Music. The most likely converts are people who already have AirPods and see the addition of HiFi as a way to make the most of their setup. If that market is large enough to impact Apple Music’s subscriber count significantly remains to be seen.
