Billie Eilish and Apple Music team up on Spatial Audio short film

A short film made by Apple Music promotes its new Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos feature using Billie Eilish's new album, "Happier Than Ever."

The 90 second short film is among a group of short interview clips promoting the album. Apple's marketing push for Spatial Audio in Apple Music has seen many short ads and featured playlists on the service.

Eilish shared the eclectic video on her personal YouTube on August 11. The short film shows Billie Eilish walking through rooms filled with mirrors, as her other selves echo her voice.

Billie Eilish won Apple's global artist of the year in 2019 and has been heavily featured on the service since. She was also an early adopter of the new formats introduced by Apple when they launched in June.

Confusingly, Apple still refers to Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio almost interchangeably. For example, the video's title mentions Spatial Audio, while the video itself mentions Dolby Atmos.

This isn't by mistake, since Dolby Atmos is key in the "surround" effect provided by Spatial Audio. Apple's marketing surrounding the two technologies has left some users confused by what it means, however.

The album is formatted for Dolby Atmos, and this can be noted by the glyph under the album in Apple Music. Spatial Audio is technology used when listening on AirPods Pro and AirPods Max to simulate head-tracked surround sound.

Check out the entire "Happier Than Ever" video playlist on and the album itself on Apple Music.

5 Comments

lordjohnwhorfin 866 comments · 18 Years

About 3 years ago

Spatial Audio is so frickin cool. I can’t imagine using anything else than the AirPods Pro. Incredible.

pairof9 74 comments · 5 Years

lordjohnwhorfin said:

Spatial Audio is so frickin cool. I can’t imagine using anything else than the AirPods Pro. Incredible.

I wish I could say the same, but it's been the complete opposite. First on our iPhones (12 Pro) then into our Macs, having the Spatial/ATMOS selected caused numerous playing errors. The error was common in that 15 seconds into the song, it went dead, maybe some feedback...but no more playing.

It's a heavy thread on Apple Community where numerous attempts at solutions and tips have not fixed it. The most common solution is to turn it all off, go back to Highest Quality. Even then, users are reporting lost songs in their library.

macgui 2456 comments · 17 Years

AI said:
Confusingly, Apple still refers to Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio almost interchangeably. For example, the video's title mentions Spatial Audio, while the video itself mentions Dolby Atmos.
That they do. They also don't differentiate the head tracking thing.

I've tried Spatial Audio with AirPods 2 and Powerbeats Pro and it's been lackluster at best. Cans with the U1 chip adds head tracking to the music with iPhones 11 and later, but that seems like a mere parlor trick to me.

Not having experienced any errors that I know of, vocals seem to get a little lost in SA compared to stereo. I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt but so far it's not working well.

There's no instant way to turn SA on and off to compare to stereo, so I'm pretty much at a lost at the moment to appreciate any improvement there might be in SA over stereo.

Ellish with her constant, distracting mumbling doesn't help sell me on SA. Maybe Apple will make videos with other, more dynamic, interesting artists that will be more entertaining and educational about SA. I know she extremely popular, but I don't care for her music at all.

entropys 4302 comments · 13 Years

Personally, I just wish Apple will fix the bug in Apple Music which causes downloads to stop playing after 15 seconds. Exactly 15 seconds.

ihatescreennames 1971 comments · 19 Years

entropys said:

Personally, I just wish Apple will fix the bug in Apple Music which causes downloads to stop playing after 15 seconds. Exactly 15 seconds.

I don’t have that bug but I’ve given up contacting Apple Support after a couple of years of trying to get a different issue resolved. Some songs I had purchased from iTunes in the past intermittently will not play on my iPhone, iPad or HomePods. There is some strange behavior, too.

For instance, if I ask HomePod Siri to play a song that turns out to be one that I had purchased it will say, “OK, now playing [whatever]” but nothing will play. If I ask Siri what song is playing it will give me the correct response but I still won’t hear anything. 10 seconds later if I ask Siri again it will reply, “There is nothing playing.” It’s similar but different on my iPhone. I have no issues using my Mac but I have all the music downloaded. Oh! I also can’t download those songs to my iPhone, etc, either (when that song is giving me an issue).

I feel like I have escalated the issue fairly high but I always get the same response that it’s a known issue that will be resolved in a forthcoming software update.

Also, I never hear any difference with SA using my AirPods Pros. I have tried several different tracks and can’t really hear anything remarkable. I could be doing something wrong.

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