AppZon to rule em all?
What you wrote. Really could be possible in coming years.
Just by thinking what other services of demand or monthly paying have done with micropayments and special content, why would they not follow the money trail?
For us. The small people listening.
It might not be all bad… hopefully.
No worries, they’ll just buy the new improved Apple AirPods, it’s been about a year now anyway. Those things aren’t keeping a charge like they used to. 
That’s peak Apple right there…
With ever increasing internet speed how is any streaming service plan on making money ? The device is the gold content will be free.
??? The increasing internet speed will only be good for content providers. It’s the ISPs that will feel the pinch on that one. Exclusive/original content will be the clearest way one service will have to differentiate itself from the others and attract subscribers.
@MadGman having a small number of streaming services offer original content could be good as in might force them to sign better quality artists. The video side provides some hope of that as some of the original content on Netflix, Hulu, etc. has been very good. There has also been a lot of crap. So it’s hard to say…
You can stream 4k content with about 25 Mbps but 50 or so it recommended at safe. HD content you can do with less than 10 Mbps which is more than plenty fast enough to stream Hi-Res audio. We’ve already got more than enough bandwidth for what we need as consumers. What the additional 5G speed and bandwidth does is help ISP as they can pack more devices on the network. IoT and real time telematics etc.
I think that’s only for content over 24/98 right?
I’m super hyped for this, I’ve been in apple music for eons but picked up tidal last year for lossless, and while tidal is well enough in and of itself juggling 2 services sucks.
I cannot wait to simplify, and I’m glad apple is going down a seemingly very straight forward route here. Confirming that the AirPods won’t work with lossless is (ironically, if also very confusingly) comforting since we know what codecs are supported there and they won’t push the kind files that “lossless 16/44.1+” implicates.
No funny business, no messing around with file formatting, just streaming ALACs at 16/441+ for no extra $$ …sounds fine to me
My theory is for the global market, the money is in the device. How did radio manage to turn a dollar all those years ? Hires recording been around for decades.
The rich western countries pay for streaming everyone else gets their content from youtube.
Im not even onboard with the doom and gloom in which tech companies buying up ISP. It would make 2020 look like a san francisco alternative lifestyle parade if they try to put cat videos behind a pay wall. When you purchase an apple device apple+ is free for a year of Dolby vision/atmos content. Dolby vision can be done on a iphone.
Wait until apple comes out with their version of youtube. "All the hirez 4k dolby crappy new U2 album and cat videos free now on apple+. " (i bought joshua tree on CD when it dropped.)
Next step is Apple developing lossless capable “bluetooth” for the airpods/pro/max and homepod type devices…and I wouldn’t doubt that happens sooner rather than later.
While that is true, I wonder if we know for sure if they offer true exclusive mode?
Some users should already see lossless rolling into their accounts…can anyone confirm some type of exclusive mode on macOS?
I don’t have a subscription just yet…
For iPhone & iPad;
You have to Go to:
= Settings - Music - Audio Quality
Activate lossless audio and then make the respective quality settings!
As a “hardcore” 
Apple user, I have found my Endgame streaming provider now.
Everything works perfectly with first-class sound quality 
To be honest, as a music lover, I have absolutely no use for the Dolby Atmos function for music.
As with Amazon’s 3D function, Apple Music D-A
now sounds completely unnatural and like a musical pulp, with which nothing can be realistically assigned spatially.
The special atmos stuff is v odd sounding but it looks like you can just turn it off.
So far I’m loving lossless, sounds indistinguishable from what I was getting off tidal. Stoked to finally be able consolidate back down to 1 service.
.@2ape2escape In your listening so far, have you noticed a discrepancy in what Tidal offers via MQA versus Apple’s offerings in Hi-Res?
I did a quick survey. Led Zeppelin is on both services in MQA/Hi-Res. Tidal offers Hifi only for Interpol, while Apple Music had Hi-Res for those same Interpol albums. I’ll bet there’s going to be a bunch of losses (all puns intended) and gains in the top tier stuff across services. At least for a little while. Though, I’m guessing Tidal’s top tier catalog is probably larger, at the moment.
I’m on Tidal now. Recently left Apple Music in April before all this news broke. Ha.
My hope is that this forces Spotify to launch their lossless program as a free add-on to premium, since that’s what I’ve been using for years at this point
Not so far, but I haven’t had a chance to sit down and really A/B. In the albums that I’ve heard an Apple lossless so far they’re indistinguishable from Tidal’s 16/44.1, but the MQA question is interesting.
Looks like we the Avalanches - “We will always love you” is MQA on tidal and lossless on Apple Music so I might use that to start.
The Apple lossless availability is kinda weird so far. The majors seem to have near total coverage, and while tons of smaller artists on smaller labels have lossless but not on every album. I believe the story is that right now ~20M songs are lossless and by EOY they’ll have the full 75M catalog
