Apple Music to Pay Artists Up to 10% More Royalties for Spatial Audio Content

All artists will do is run their album through some digital process to meet the spatial audio requirement. To the user, it will be a worse experience and further cements the gimmick spatial audio is unless mastered appropriately.

It’s worth noting that Apple Pay artists double that of Spotify. I know it’s still a pittance but it’s twice the pittance. You can also directly support them via album sales from the iTunes Store.

In short if you care about the livelihood of your favourite musicians: don’t use Spotify. Oh, and go to as many gigs as you can.

Although I use Apple Music, Apple devices across the board and AirPods Pro 2 & Max, I have Atmos disabled on everything. It seems to take the 'oomph' out of so many tracks, especially bass-heavy stuff. I found plenty of examples where a song sounded weak and in desperate need of more volume (at max), but with Atmos off, had sufficient volume and the bass thumped like thunder. Especially on AirPods Pro 2.

Dunno why, but for me, Atmos takes the life out of so much of my music.

All artists will do is run their album through some digital process to meet the spatial audio requirement. To the user, it will be a worse experience and further cements the gimmick spatial audio is unless mastered appropriately.

This is the only thing that I'm scared of. Properly mastered dolby songs sound amazing on my home theatre/AirPods, but if the song is ran just through some automated process it sucks ass. :(

You seem to have a low opinion of artists as greedy swindlers.

And while some certainly are just that, many artists are actually very passionate about how their music sounds.

In the end, if the artist you listen to cares more about money than about sound quality, you are likely to get an inferior product.

Maybe artists have integrity, but labels don’t concern themselves with principles, and in the side of the industry I listen to, most songs are sold as singles to labels (e.g. Spinnin Records, Monstercat, UKF, Disciple), and when that happens they usually lose control of where the music shows up — and in what quality.

Billie Eilish’s albums belong to Interscope. Ed Sheeran’s music is property of WMG. Megan Thee Stallion is on Atlantic. Unless you’re listening to a uniquely scrappy and undiscovered band (or a “Taylor’s Version”), the mastering/republishing is most likely out of an artist’s hands.

All artists will do is run their album through some digital process to meet the spatial audio requirement. To the user, it will be a worse experience and further cements the gimmick spatial audio is unless mastered appropriately.

or you could read the article

Apple ('https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/companies/apple/') said on Monday that it has “a zero-tolerance policy against deceptive or manipulative content and this also applies to Spatial Audio content”. The streaming service added that its teams have implemented “a quality control process that includes flagging content not delivered in accordance with Apple Music’s Spatial Audio specifications and standards of quality”.