Apple Confirms Lossless Audio and Spatial Audio Are Coming to Apple Music June 2021

Apple announced that Apple Music will be offering Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos tracks, as well as offering its entire catalog in Lossless Audio, at no additional cost for subscribers, starting June 2021. Lossless will use ALAC file format, and support 24-bit/48kHz as standard, with Hi-Res Lossless Audio files available up to 24-bit/192kHz. Apple is even promoting the fact that Hi-Res Lossless will require external equipment, such as a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC)!

It all started with an article from Billboard that stated: "On Wednesday (August 7) Apple Music announced the launch of Apple Digital Masters, a new initiative by the streaming giant that combines all of its "Mastered for iTunes" offerings into one global catalog. This is the company's first public acknowledgement of the initiative, which it has been quietly unveiling for some time." And suddenly the story was all over the place. But Apple didn't actually announce anything. Or at least, there was no official press release from Apple to be found confirming the story.