Spatial audio is one of the big draws for Apple Music, and it appears Apple wants squeeze even more Dolby Atmos-mixed spatial tracks onto its streaming music service.
Starting in 2024, Apple will give “added weighting” to Apple Music tracks mixed in Dolby Atmos, the object-based audio format that powers Apple’s Spatial Audio technology, according to Bloomberg (subscription required).
That could mean a particular Atmos track might be more likely to pop up in an Apple Music search than a typical stereo track, and that means musicians looking for bigger royalty payouts would have more incentive to mix their tunes in the format, as Bloomberg notes.
This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best music streaming services. You can also read our full Apple Music review.
Apple has good reason to push spatial audio, as it offers a clear selling point over its biggest rival: Spotify, which has yet to roll out spatial audio support or even lossless music tracks.
Music mixed in spatial audio has become more and more common on the biggest music streaming services, including Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal. Both Amazon and Tidal offer spatialized tracks in Dolby Atmos and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format, but Apple relies solely on Dolby Atmos for spatial audio.
Using Apple AirPods, you can listen to any music track in spatial audio by enabling the “Spatialize Stereo” setting on an Apple device, but more and more tracks are being mixed—or remixed, in the case of catalog reissues—natively in Dolby Atmos, a process that’s “broadly affordable,” Bloomberg says.
Spatial audio tracks are mixed to sound like the music is coming from all around you, even when wearing headphones.
As opposed to traditional stereo mixes where sound is directed to either the left or right channel, Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio allow music engineers to place sounds precisely in a 360-degree space. With the right playback equipment, the sound can be scaled for the available number of speakers, from a pair of headphones to a full-on 5.1.4-channel (or better) speaker configuration.
Of course, not everyone is a fan of Dolby Atmos music, and like any recording, the quality of Atmos tracks depends on the care that went into the mastering process. At their best, Dolby Atmos recordings can sound revelatory (just check out the recent remaster of The Beatles’ Revolver). At worst, though, Atmos tracks sound muddled and distractingly gimmicky.
Luckily, you can turn off Dolby Atmos support when listening to Apple Music on an Apple device (Settings > Music, then select Off for the Dolby Atmos setting); doing so drops the Dolby Atmos metadata, leaving you with the stereo tracks.
That said, Dolby Atmos music appears to be here to stay, and on Apple Music, there may soon be a lot more of it.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he covers smart speakers, soundbars, and other smart and home-theater devices. You can follow Ben on Twitter.