Android users who prefer to use Apple Music for their musical needs, have a reason to rejoice, as the application, which is known for its brilliant audio quality, has decided to bring out lossless-quality streaming and spatial audio on Android, as it plans to introduce Dolby Atmos on Apple Music on the OS. The features were first introduced on Apple’s own iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, a little over a month ago. The two new features will be made available starting with the latest update of the Apple Music performance.
Lossless streaming on Android comes with the same warnings that iOS users were informed about previously. The basic gist is that the service consumes “significantly more data.” Moreover, users have also been advised to make use of external hardware like DAC, to avail the full benefits of the feature, including hi-res audio. But in general, the tool will be available on almost all Android devices.
Spatial audio, on the other hand, is not so omnipresent, and will work well only with those phones that already support Dolby Atmos (the list for which mostly includes the higher-end phones). However, many different types of headphones and earphones, will be able to make use of the feature. On a tangent, spatial audio is compatible with AirPods and Beats headphones and earbuds powered by H1 or W1 chips, and also with speakers on the latest models of the Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
This comes after the features had been in beta for a limited number of users, leading to rumors that lossless and hi-res audio were coming to Android.
The features were first announced back in May, when the company had said that existing users will not have to pay any additional amount for availing their benefits, and had promised immersive listening experiences, akin to those on Amazon Music HD and Tidal HiFi. Here’s the catch, however. Not all albums present on Apple Music are compatible with lossless and spatial audio, as they apparently haven’t been developed over Dolby Atmos.
Nevertheless, also promised were exclusive Dolby Atmos playlists, complete with special badges to let people find them easily. Moreover, lossless will eventually be opened up to the company’s entire catalog, which boasts some 75 million tracks.
This new announcement has the potential of finally satisfying the music cravings of one too many Android users, who have been left wishing for more after Google took down its Google Play Music app, in the hopes that users will switch over to YouTube Music (which, many say, is not up to the mark in terms of sound quality).
