Apple has updated Apple Music for Android, introducing lossless and spatial audio on the platform.
The new Apple Music for Android 3.6 release has turned on Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio for the first time, making Apple Music even more compelling for those on Android, who’d typically choose Spotify or YouTube.
The company confirmed that, like on iPhones, lossless audio will only make a real difference when it’s listened to through the right speakers or headphones. The company confirmed that Dolby Atoms-powered Spatial Audio will only work on “compatible devices,” but did not specify which Android devices would be compatible at launch.
The new lossless audio and Spatial Audio services were switched on for Apple Music customers earlier in the month, and unlike some competitors’ services, it’s available at no additional cost, in Apple’s efforts to further compete with Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, TIDAL, and a raft of other localized music streaming services.
Zane Lowe, of Apple Music, spoke about Spatial Audio at the time of its release on Apple devices. He said: “Among the first songs I listened to were Lady Gaga’s “Rain on Me” and Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead.” It was hard to put into words because I’ve spent my whole life in a two-channel environment; I was born into stereo. It dawned on me that there are a lot of artists in the past and present who would have loved to be able to lean in with this kind of technology — to make their songs come to life, make them bigger, and just take them to levels no one had even thought of yet.
“But they only had two stereo channels to play with. Now they can go beyond that. So, to be able to hear parts of these songs coming from behind and around me? I was like, “I’m all in. I get it.” TV got HD — now music gets Spatial.
“What I immediately thought was, “How are artists going to use this? How is Lil Baby going to use this? How are Olivia Rodrigo or Peggy Gou going to use this? How is Frank Ocean going to use this? Are they going to start creating music with the idea of a three-dimensional environment, as opposed to this two-channel environment?”
“I’m fascinated to know how I might be emotionally moved by my favorite songs in a different way with Spatial Audio. Because it’s all going through my ears and triggering something, right? That’s what dawned on me when I was listening to these songs in Spatial: I was listening to these songs that I knew really well, but I was feeling something different. So, it’s not even just about the way it’s going to end up sounding, it’s very much how songs are going to feel.”