Apple Acquires Classical Music Streaming Service Primephonic

Apple announced it has acquired Primephonic, the classical music streaming service that featured a search and browse functionality optimized for classical, combined with lossless streaming, handpicked expert recommendations, and extensive contextual details on repertoire and recordings. Available for only 3 years, Primephonic never really went very far because it only worked on web browsers and mobile apps, the lower subscription tier used the obsolete MP3 codec, among many other limitations.

Subscribers to Amazon Music Unlimited can now upgrade to the highest quality streaming audio available, for free. Reacting to the fact that Apple Music announced it will offer lossless audio streaming as standard starting in June, Amazon also announced that Amazon Music HD Lossless Audio, previously available at an additional cost, is now standard for Unlimited Tier subscribers.

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)!

This year, I was really looking forward to meeting with the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the support organization for the advancement and adoption of USB technology, and discuss their projects for the USB4 Specification, the really big, gigantic update story on that front (at least in consumer electronics) since CES last year. The USB-IF announced the publication of the latest and greatest USB4 specification in September 2019, offering a major update to the USB architecture that complements and builds upon the existing USB 3.2 and USB 2.0 architectures. This article was published originally in The Audio Voice 264 newsletter, February 6.

On Tuesday, October 15, in New York, Sony, together with four music streaming services and an important number of music industry partners promoted a press event to announce the new 360 Reality Audio music ecosystem. This follows the presentations made early at CES 2019 and a repeat of the demonstrations at IFA 2019 in Berlin. At this event, Sony announced the upcoming commercial availability of 360 Reality Audio, an immersive audio experience utilizing object-based spatial audio technology.

Amazon announced the launch of Amazon Music HD, a new tier of "higher quality" lossless streaming, promising "more than 50 million songs in High Definition," and "millions of songs in Ultra High Definition," a designation akin to TV services that Amazon thinks consumers will understand better than High Resolution Audio (HRA). The first tier of the service "High Definition" is in fact a CD-quality FLAC lossless streaming, while the "Ultra HD" tier defines FLAC streaming of 24-bit and a sample rate up to 192 kHz, or HRA.

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.

Amarra for TIDAL is the ultimate music playback solution for streaming audio, and will be available from the Sonic Studio web site for US$39.95, while the free Amarra Remote app will be available from the iTunes Music Store. The new player was developed in conjunction with TIDAL’s engineers.