Apple Lossless format coming to iTMS?

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A new version of Apple Computer's iTunes Producer software suggest that the company may begin to offer tracks through its iTunes Music Store that are encoded in its higher-quality lossless compression format.

Apple introduced the format in 2004 as part of QuickTIme 6.5.1, saying it offered CD-quality audio in "about half the storage space." The company later added support for the format to iTunes 4.5.

In a private release of iTunes Producer 1.4 this week, Apple said the software "now encodes music in Apple Lossless format, which produces larger audio files and will increase upload time."

iTunes Producer is distributed to record labels by Apple as a tool for prepping and submitting their content for inclusion on the iTunes Music Store. The iTunes service currently serves up tracks in only the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format.

Although the ACC format also produces tracks with a quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio, it does so to a lesser extent than the Apple Lossless format.

It's unclear what role the Apple Lossless format will play on the iTunes music store, if at all. Unlike AAC, the format does not presently utilize a digital rights management (DRM) scheme to assure copy-protection — though popular speculation is that DRM could be applied to the format in much the same way as other QuickTime file formats.

The iTunes Producer 1.4 release also improves stability of uploading playlists and displays upload progress, sources told AppleInsider.

Comments (92)

zweben

said about 16 years ago

I'd buy Apple Lossless songs!

Especially if you can downconvert them later. Even the burn and rip a CD method would be fine, as there would be no quality loss- it'd be the same as ripping from the original CD. Plus that would allow you to get DRM free music without a lossy transcoding step.

I hope this happens!

west

said about 16 years ago

I think this would be agreat idea, considering a lot of what keeps me from downloading most of my music from iTunes is the somewhat low audio quality. Instead of (or in addition to) putting lossless files for sale, they should just do AAC, but at a higher quality, like 320 (where I rip all my CDs).

hattig

said about 16 years ago

I guess that new content may be in Apple Lossless (with a Fairplay wrapper), but it will take a longer time to transition the older content (the millions of songs) from 128kbps AAC to Apple Lossless.

If they're distributing it now, it might not be in effect until later this year, or even next year.

I would have been happy with 256kbps AAC, which would have been practically indistinguishable from CD quality for 99.9% of people. I actually only rip my CDs to 160kbps VBR AAC as it is now, it's good enough on the iPod.

[Deleted User]

said about 16 years ago

The user and all related content has been deleted.

thataboy

said about 16 years ago

Great news.

Either Apple could start selling Lossless, or they could be using these files as the basis for an allofmp3-style system, whereby you set in iTunes prefs what bitrate you'd like, and the Music Store automatically down-converts the Lossless files before they are sent to you.

It would take a bit longer, surely, but it would be a wonderful feature. That way, if you're happy with 128k and the quick downloads, cool. If you don't mind putting up with longer downloads, you can go for higher bitrate or Lossless.

A+ news (if true).