Apple recently teased a new special announcement in their Apple Music app, showing a video of an revolving Apple Music logo with multiple rows of “Apple Music” text behind it. Along with teaser, hidden within the source code of the Apple Music web app, there are references to ‘Lossless’ and ‘Hi Res Lossless’ music, which may be the reason behind the announcement.
Earlier this month, there were references to “Lossless” audio hidden within the code of iOS 14.6, indicating that Apple has possibly been working on the feature for quite a while now. At the moment, Apple Music supports streaming at a maximum of 256kbps using its AAC codec.
The Apple Music android app also has been readying itself for lossless music support, in particular it is getting ready to support 24-bit/48kHz and 24-bit/192kHz lossless bitrates. According to the app’s code, a single 3-minute song in lossless format will consume about 36MB of data.
All of these code references along with special announcement points to Apple announcing finally announcing support for lossless audio on their Apple Music platform. With respect to their rival streaming apps, Tidal already lossless streaming on their platform, and Spotify recently announced that they are working on introducing lossless audio support in their platform.