Apple music streaming service

[AllenB]

Very disappointing from Apple if this pans out. Catering to the masses, not us picky audiophiles. I really thought that Apple would go one better than Spotify and offer up lossless (at a higher subscription rate). I guess that they do not want an humungous backlog of complaints from all their iPhone users when bandwidth cannot cope from the service providers. Not their fault but it would reflect very badly on their product.

Why would you expect Apple to offer something not used by the masses to which they cater? I think 99% of users couldn't care less wheter or not they're listening to a 24/192 or an MP3 track. Not to mention one wouldn't hear the difference anyway when you're traveling or in an office or working out. Music is for most people just wallpaper, nothing more. Apple is in the business of making a profit, so they'll save on storage and bandwith by using small files to maximize that profit.

Woah, easy tiger, it's not just my expectation. But maybe, just maybe, they might have wanted to offer something over and above Spotify, as an option, not necessarily as the default. Something to entice all those iTunes customers who used to pay for downloads from their store, but now prefer to pay a Spotify sub for lossy streaming. Not much to entice those lost customers back, if it's all on the same streaming rate and they are entrenched in Spotify. What about the youth of today that have moved up from ear-buds to Beats headphones and similar, apart from a fashion accessory, I am sure part of the appeal is better SQ. Apple / 'Beats' at lossless might have pushed that market even further.

All conjecture until we know for sure next week.

Now please get back in your cage!