Lately, the music streaming industry’s greatest players, Amazon and Apple, claimed that they would start offering lossless audio streams. This giveaway is only for their paid users without any additional charges.
This points to the first time Apple has provided a top-quality music format to its users. However, Amazon (and others) have given HD or hi-fi music for many years under premium tiers.
More benefits for less money (or free) sounds fantastic. But unless you’re Jerry Hildenbrand or Neil Young, I will parlay that you either would unfamiliar with lossless music or you don’t care about it.
So, what is lossless music, you may ask? Necessarily, it’s a non-compressed digital audio file that gives hi-fi audio near to what you might hear personally. There are various versions, definitions, and formats of lossless music. But the significant thing to consider is that it’s not a specifically common chimera for most digital sound services.
So why are Amazon and Apple giving away lossless audio to their paid subscribers? I talked with many sound experts to get a better knowledge of what their motivations might be. But first, check some history of sound.
Hi-Fi History
High-fidelity audio is something that music lovers have been obsessed with for years. Getting back to hi-fi home theatre devices that began introducing out in the early 1960s and 1970s. Companies like Bose, Sennheiser, Master & Dynamic, Klipsch, Olufsen, and Bang have developed their businesses to provide premium audio devices. These devices were for commercial purposes.
There have been moderate user hardware choices for getting the benefits of high-fi audio in the mobile space. But at the end of the days, several people were still pirating their digital audio rather than streaming it. Then, musician Neil Young tried to release his portable music equipment.
In that device, played digital audio in 24-bit, 192 kHz audio. Still, the sound quality given on Young’s Pono player was far better than the iPods or Microsoft Zunes sometimes. Ill-fated Android OEM Essential attempted to provide a 3.5mm headphone jack with an advanced DAC accessory.
But lesser people purchased that than bought an Essential Phone. Most lately, LG was popular for its digital audio converters (DACs) that it developed into some of its enhanced phones. However, it closes down its smartphone manufacturing business earlier this year.
In the early 90s, more consumers started switching from CDs to digital music. And we watched the growth of file-transferring sites like Napster represent digital music platforms like iTunes. It then featured again to some of the best streaming applications that we use and love today, like Spotify. The issue with these new digital music streaming was that several compression techniques compromised the audio quality. The service providers employed these techniques to obtain large files to play over small bandwidth connections. Or to fit on lesser storage devices.
Apart from Spotify, Amazon and Apple are the two biggest players in streaming music. Now that both are providing high-fi lossless music to their premium users without any additional cost. Now, we have to see how other services out there can compete.
Musical Motivations
There are many possible reasons why Amazon and Apple are taking these steps now. But I think there are three most significant and plausible reasons. The first reason is the small group of audiophiles willing to pay for high-quality audio. Secondly, the prospective hardware sales, and third, the rising competitive streaming place.
Phillip Donaldson said that when it comes to lossless music, “It’s a niche, most users wouldn’t even know the difference.” Donaldson is an audio engineer at Canada’s biggest television and sports networks, TSN and CTV.
Is Becky Roberts an Audio Editor and Hi-Fi at What Hi-Fi? Roberts has written considerably on different audio file formats and hardware manufacturers. Roberts quite candidly agreed when I ask the same question to her. “No, I don’t think so, to be honest.” She says that while lossless music is a real thing, it’s being utilized primarily as a marketing term for companies. Roberts also says that several people confuse and mix up lossless music with relevant terms like Hi-Fi and hi-resolution. “I think it will be a niche thing, especially since you require extra devices in many cases.”
Amazon and Apple Music presently rank as two of the most loved streaming services after Spotify. So, it will be exciting to watch if their broadly existing enhanced file formats can push away audiophiles from competitors—the competitors like Deezer HiFi, Tidal HiFi, and even Spotify HiFi.
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