A curious report earlier as we speak claimed that Apple is engaged on a HiFi plan for Apple Music. While the report itself doesn’t come with a lot proof, 9to5Mac was capable of finding code in iOS 14.6 that implies support for HiFi songs coming to Apple Music sooner or later.
The unique report says that Apple is expected to announce HiFi support on Apple Music within the coming weeks, because it additionally mentions that it’s going to value the identical $9.99 monthly because the common subscription — suggesting that Apple won’t cost extra for its HiFi plan.
9to5Mac can now verify {that a} HiFi plan might certainly be coming to Apple Music. In the primary beta construct of iOS 14.6, which was launched final week to builders, we discovered new code added to the Music app that particularly mentions “Dolby Atmos,” “Dolby Audio,” and “Lossless.” Despite supporting Apple’s personal HiFi audio codec ALAC, the Music app has by no means provided support for Dolby Atmos or Dolby Audio.
What makes it extra fascinating, nonetheless, is that these references have been solely included in iOS 14.6 beta 1. We additionally verified the inner information of iOS 14.5 and iOS 14.6 beta 2 (launched this week), however the codes aren’t there. This means that the mentions of Dolby Atmos and Dolby Audio are certainly associated to one thing new that Apple is making an attempt to cover from us.
For these unfamiliar, HiFi songs have much less audio compression, which implies they sound higher with extra element. TIDAL, for instance, has lengthy been well-known for providing a HiFi plan, whereas Spotify recently announced that it’s additionally engaged on a model with entry to HiFi songs. Apple Music, nonetheless, at the moment solely provides songs utilizing the AAC codec with 256kbps bitrate.
iOS 14.6 also needs to allow paid subscriptions within the Podcasts app, which have been introduced at Apple’s particular occasion in April. The firm says that this new Podcasts characteristic will probably be accessible to customers in May, so we assume that iOS 14.6 will probably be launched to the general public someday later this month — corroborating the Apple Music HiFi report.
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