Amazon Reacts To Apple’s Announcement and Confirms Music HD For All at No Extra Cost

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)!

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.

Why is it so easy to find an audio enthusiast claiming that his new headphones, DAC, preamplifier, or pair of speakers “completely changed his perception of the music” and “made it possible to hear things in a totally new way,” and yet so many consumers cannot actually hear the difference when listening to high-resolution audio?

High Resolution Audio will be a major focus at the 137th Audio Engineering Society Convention in Los Angeles (October 9-12, 2014). The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) will present a comprehensive program on the topic, which is simultaneously causing excitement and passionate debate among audio professionals.