“Apple Music will be streaming its tracks at a lower quality than its competition,” Nicholas Yeap reports for CNN under the headline “Apple Music will sound worse but save on your data plan.”

“Apple said its tracks will stream at 256 kilobits per second. That’s a bitrate similar to music files available on iTunes, but the Apple Music files are 20% smaller than competing streaming music services, including main rival Spotify,” Yeap reports. “Spotify’s audio files come in three sizes: 96 kbps, 160kbps and . Files with the highest quality are only available to paid subscribers.”

“Besides eating up your data, higher quality music files require larger storage memory on your devices when downloaded for offline play. High quality audio is crucial to DJs and people who plays music at a high volume,” Yeap reports. “But if you are just playing music on your iPhone on the way to work, you’re not going to notice a huge difference.”

Full article – via donotlink – here.

MacDailyNews Take: No wonder nobody watches CNN.

Apple Music will be streaming its tracks at a lower bitrate, not a lower quality.

Apple Music will be using AAC, not MP3 like the rest of the music streaming soon-to-be-also-rans. (Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis format, which is open source, hence free, and also inferior to AAC).

AAC delivers better sound quality at lower bit rates than MP3. 256 kbps AAC beats 320 kbps MP3 in sound quality.

Stop using MP3. It’s like so not a thing. It’s like banging out a term paper on a typewriter.

Sheesh, we covered all this over a decade ago!

Update, 4:38pm EDT: Clarified Spotify’s streaming format as Ogg Vorbis above as per MacDailyNews reader “ecrabb.”

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jubei” for the heads up.]

SEE ALSO:

AAC: Apple’s preferred audio codec – July 18, 2014
Apple discusses AAC vs. MP3 codecs; 128 kbps AAC as good or better than 160 kbps MP3 – April 29, 2003