Apple music to launch lossless streaming
- Thread starter Pardeep Bansal
- Start date
narenvaidee
Active Member
If the source is bad, no amount of upsampling or remixing will help. If they are remastered, then it might be ok... like the 'Kind of Blue' by Miles Davis and Abba Gold albums. Hey, I've come this far, listening on a Dyanora 2-in-one cassette player and that 'chinna chinna aasai' sounded heavenly. The same song on AAC/Amazon/YouTube sounds hollow and thin. The source that they got may be a bad one.
kapvin
Well-Known Member
Hi. So many years ago, much much before apple talked about lossless audio, I had read about the masters for iTunes program. What essentially was happening was, that apple was asking content providers to 24 bit 96k masters for processing. The reason for this was that the apple encoders can then produce the best “sounding” lossy output because it was more data to work with. This is probably why they can so easily give us lossless/ High res versions; they have collected most masters in hi res.
however, what happens upstream, in the content provider studio in terms of mix bias and compression, was not and is not in apple’s control. Net net, a badly produced album on Apple Music will not miraculously sound better with high res. But we already know that, at Hifi vision in many many debates about hi res audio.
anyway I am feeling quite grumpy at apple. Till now the lossless option is not available to me. so I just have to listen to other people’s perceptions rather than try it out myself.
narenvaidee
Active Member
I'm grumpy too. We pay more than the US counterparts and yet we wait like 3rd class folks. Maybe we all should take to twitter... but heck, we have better things to do I guess. We never know if our lovely government has a hand in this (licensing, etc?).
Do we? Apple music is dirt cheap in India for the library and features that it offers. I have the family plan which is 179 bucks whereas the same plan in the US is for 14.99USD which is Rs.1094.
Passive_audio_enthusiast
Well-Known Member
Doesn’t it work as lossless if you use a VPN?
Generic (stupid) question on streaming: why are larger files more expensive to stream for the music service provider?
I have no idea if the costs involved in streaming for providers.
Grateful to anyone who knows how this works for a brief explanation
I have no idea if the costs involved in streaming for providers.
Grateful to anyone who knows how this works for a brief explanation
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good question. Usually Apple's geofencing is VPN proof but let me check.
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Deleted member 15865
Guest
Are they? I imagine server space might be the only operating cost that goes up with size of files. That shouldn’t anyway be a major part of the cost structure (licensing fees and marketing probably costs much more).
I am wondering if the reason for delaying lossless service for India by all these players - Apple, Amazon, Tidal… might be the still poor bandwidth, especially mobile internet data which could potentially lead to frustrating experience for majority of customers if they tried playing lossless/spatial?
Surely bandwidth can not be an issue with so much high definition video streaming already available?
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Deleted member 15865
Guest
It might be, if we consider that most OTT video viewing happens in the living room, with broadband (also, you need a TV to truly enjoy HD video), but a large percentage of music listening happens outside - during travel, walks etc where you are at the mercy of mobile data. Mobile call quality and data speed is a sham in India - while the numbers preceding the letter G keep increasing, there’s nowhere a commensurate improvement in these parameters. I wonder if the operators over-utilise the infrastructure to keep the pricing low.
In India it actually makes sense to charge more for a lossless plan. That would ensure only those who are sure of their internet bandwidth opt for it and the rest don’t feel offended/under-served either.
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I think Analogous meant the bandwidth cost for the music provider. The customers' cost might increase or they might consume it slowly but that shouldn't impact Apple's cost. This is where I think he was citing Video providers like Youtube and others, which provide 10-20X bandwidth compared to an Audio lossless file for free
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Deleted member 15865
Guest
I don’t think so. I think I understood him right.
I actually found both responses useful and informative, as I understand so little about the technicalities of bandwidth, pricing and economics of streaming.
My original query was about bandwidth cost for the music provider as pointed out by @msankadi
But I had not considered the mobile device and 4G services as flagged by @SachinChavan. Is it possible that poor quality of OTT (I googled this: stands for “Over The Top” and refers to any streaming service that delivers content over the internet) is what prevents streaming lossless audio files?
My original query was about bandwidth cost for the music provider as pointed out by @msankadi
But I had not considered the mobile device and 4G services as flagged by @SachinChavan. Is it possible that poor quality of OTT (I googled this: stands for “Over The Top” and refers to any streaming service that delivers content over the internet) is what prevents streaming lossless audio files?
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Deleted member 15865
Guest
@Analogous, you didn’t mean ‘the bandwidth cost for the music provider’ in the highlighted comment which @msankadi was pointing to.
Folks, refer below table, taken from this source
I think our speeds well exceed the minimum requirements, where they perform poorly is the latency, try any speedtest by changing the server to one in United States, we will stop boasting about even our home broadbands, do not need to take me at face value, try for yourself. This is even more of a problem on mobile connection. As a result TIDAL sounds poor on a 4G connection than on a broadband, we verified this several times during past audio meets.
I think delayed launch of such service can be due to one or more of the following:-
1. Localized / geographical proximity of servers, waiting for setup
2. Copyright issues, Indian vs Overseas rights and related monetary complications, if any
3. Piracy concerns, yes, Google Up, there seems to be ways to download (as standalone files, not offline listening) from services like TIDAL
4. Business Case for ROI, considering how many will pay for such services in India vs Investment Required
Service | Download speed required | Data usage | Hours to 1 GB |
| Spotify (High audio setting) | 0.160 Mbps | 0.072 GB per hour | 13.9 hours |
| Spotify (Very high audio setting) | 0.320 Mbps | 0.144 GB per hour | 6.94 hours |
| Browsing Facebook | 1 Mbps | 0.09 GB per hour | 11.1 hours |
| Deezer | 1.411 Mbps | 0.635 GB per hour | 1.57 hours |
| TIDAL Masters | 3 Mbps | 1.35 GB per hour | 0.74 hours |
| Netflix in HD | 5 Mbps | 3 GB per hour | 0.33 hours |
I think our speeds well exceed the minimum requirements, where they perform poorly is the latency, try any speedtest by changing the server to one in United States, we will stop boasting about even our home broadbands, do not need to take me at face value, try for yourself. This is even more of a problem on mobile connection. As a result TIDAL sounds poor on a 4G connection than on a broadband, we verified this several times during past audio meets.
I think delayed launch of such service can be due to one or more of the following:-
1. Localized / geographical proximity of servers, waiting for setup
2. Copyright issues, Indian vs Overseas rights and related monetary complications, if any
3. Piracy concerns, yes, Google Up, there seems to be ways to download (as standalone files, not offline listening) from services like TIDAL
4. Business Case for ROI, considering how many will pay for such services in India vs Investment Required
Apologies for my ambiguous comment. But honestly I found both your perspectives useful and relevant to this discussion. Let’s keep it going @haisaikat has shared some interesting data and even more interesting opinions (I never heard of google up or considered the possibility of downloading standalone files from Tidal. (I feel like an Eskimo trying out ice cream for the first time)
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Deleted member 15865
Guest
Reason 2: Wouldn’t it apply as much for 256 kbps as for lossless? Surely Apple/Amazon can figure out those. If not, when Amazon can spend USD 9 bn to buy MGM for their content, it’d cost far less to acquire Saregama. In fact, the huge run up stocks of Saregama (500%) and Tips (700%) have seen in the past year suggests the market might be anticipating some action.
Reason 3: Assuming 2-3 % users engage in piracy, they surely would have the intent and the resources to use VPN and access international streams.
Reason 4: India, while not being a high individual spend market, is voluminous enough to make consumer businesses with low variable costs interested and keen. We see that in OTT video, so why not in audio?
Reason 1: Probably, but if 3 were valid for Apple, I’d imagine they’d have ensured 4 in time.
As for this, I reiterate the argument that while video is consumed mostly at home (where broadband is available), audio is largely consumed outside, especially during travel and waits which makes it vulnerable to poor mobile internet bandwidth.
Thanks @haisaikat for the additional input on latency. It will affect the lag before the first song is played as well as when one changes album, playlist etc.
Another theory for the delay could be that Apple might be still negotiating packaged offers with the ISPs. That is the way Prime Video gained a large foothold in India.
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eprafulla
New Member
I suspect this album is poorly masterd in first place. My CD rip also sounds like 64kbps lossy mp3. Same story on Tidal HiFi.
Can you try anything new? May be something by A R Rahman. You should find anything on Sony Music, SaReGaMa, Venus or Tips as lossless.
So far: Almost all Indian record labels offer lossless on Tidal/Deezer with a big exception of T-Series. Hope Apple lossless gets T-Series on board for lossless.
True. Here in India presently I see there is abundance of sellers on whatsapp groups selling lossless to CD burnt copies with fake covers as original old items, these 2-3% are the ones to be aware of. But yes, they can also do through VPN, you are absolutely right and this problem will be is always there.
Again this is my guess, I do not have supporting facts, but subscribers of lossless audio streaming may not be more on the go users who would be able to differentiate between 256 / 320 vs lossless audio with regular earplugs. They would be more static people even if listening on 4G but with more focus and dedicated setup no matter how minimal that it.
I think Jitter in internet connection is also one component to be considered in this area. And for latency, remember if you see troubles in connection in video streaming then at times there is a momentary pause for buffering or a momentary downgrade of resolution. Similar impact on high bitrate audio streaming we have to be aware of. All in all, internet is not innocent, especially when we are streaming from a server thousands of miles away.
Sorry dear for using this kind of lingo, I tried to mean look up on google search
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