Apple Music with Dolby Atmos
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It doesn’t matter if Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos is good, because it’s already the future of Apple Music and the music industry at large, for better or for worse. Let’s explain.
Apple announced Spatial Audio as part of Apple Music in May 2021. In less than two years, the company is already celebrating its success as part of a special press release.
In it, Eddy Cue said: “Since launch, Spatial Audio’s monthly listener count has more than tripled, with over 80% of global subscribers enjoying the experience, while Spatial Audio’s monthly increased by more than 1000%.
The increase in listeners is likely related to the extent to which Apple enables the audio format on its devices.
The built-in speakers of the iPhone XS all automatically support spatial audio with Dolby Atmos. AirPods, modern Beats headphones, and even any Bluetooth headphones (which the iPhone knows to be headphones).
Wired headphones also support the feature if Spatial Audio is explicitly enabled in the settings, rather than set to “automatic”.
Apple is all about Spatial Audio. So much so that it bundled it with lossless audio and gave it to subscribers at no extra cost, although Apple paid more royalties for those audio formats.
Spatial Audio in the Music Industry
In July 2021, following the deployment of Spatial Audio, Beatles producer Giles Martin commented on the technology as well as the production and sound of the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album.
In the rolling stone interview, Martin said the first Spatial Audio mix wasn’t quite right. “I’m going to go back to theatrical mixing and do what’s called near-field Dolby Atmos, as opposed to cinematic Dolby Atmos.”
Overall, despite the changes he felt were necessary, Martin was optimistic about the new listening experience and its future.
“I think we’re just at the start. And I think what it can do is create intimacy with the music. You can hear the difference with spatial audio. It might not be always better, but there is a difference.”
Almost two years later, all major label releases on Apple Music have Spatial Audio mixing available. Even better, older versions continue to be released weekly and highlighted in the app.
Mixing for Dolby Atmos
The audio format is growing and growing, but it hasn’t yet spread as widely as lossless. This is mainly due to the associated costs to produce spatial mixtures.
As an example, the Dolby Atmos production suite costs $299. The Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite costs around $1,000. There may be other costs depending on the recording configuration.
Overall, however, the biggest expense comes from building a Dolby-recommended 7.1.4 monitoring system.
That would be seven surround speakers, a subwoofer, and four overhead speakers. However, the production suite will support up to 22 speakers, if anyone wants it.
Once these costs come down one way or another, we should see even broader adaptation.
The independent side
In fact, Lyrah is a musical artist who receives more than 250,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and has chosen not to invest in Spatial Audio yet.
Lyrah and Ciel Eckard-Lee
She explained, “There are two reasons why I don’t have my songs mixed into spatial audio. The cost and my audience base being mostly on Spotify, which doesn’t offer a spatial listening experience.”
“I would love to do it long term, but because I’m trying to keep my production costs as low as possible, it just doesn’t make sense right now,” she said. “I would probably invest more in my live performance experience before I had a spatial audio listening experience.”
Lyrah collaborator and mixing/mastering engineer Ciel Eckard-Lee added, “Spatial audio can deliver an incredibly emotional experience in the right context, but most consumers don’t have the playback system to actually be immersed.”
“While Apple’s headphones do a good job of approximating spatialization, they’re not able to fully replicate being in a speaker array, and it mostly feels like a marketing tactic to sell more headphones and differentiate Apple Music,” he said.
“I also think that not all types of music fit well in the space because a lot of the mixing and production sounds that we love were developed for stereo,” Eckard-Lee said. “With the right listening environment and the right production, it can be great, but what’s available to the average consumer hasn’t been so compelling so far.”
Other spatial audio
While Apple is certainly pushing the hardest on the spatial audio front, it’s not the only one.
Amazon Music Unlimited offers a catalog of “thousands” of Spatial Audio songs mastered in Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio. Tidal, as part of its $19.99 per month HiFi Plus tier, offers access to Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio spatial mixes.
As of January 19, 2023, Spotify no longer offers lossless or spatial audio songs on its streaming service.
Dolby Atmos in other entertainment
Stepping back from Spatial Audio music, the bigger picture could be the prevalence of Dolby Atmos in movies and TV shows. Consumers are trained to associate this Dolby brand with immersive and spatial audio content.
Never mind that Dolby Atmos for music isn’t the same thing – including the detail that movie releases must be mixed and mastered in a Dolby Certified studio, while music releases don’t.
Dolby Atmos is simply associated with better sound, even if consumers can’t quite express what that is.
Spatial audio is the future of music
We’re far enough down this Spatial Audio road that it doesn’t look like it’s going to be abandoned anytime soon.
Virtual surround sound
Apple probably invested a lot of time and money into it, because it’s important for virtual reality where you need to hear sounds in a 360-degree space.
Most importantly, it’s a differentiator for Apple Music that customers don’t put off.
Anecdotally, Apple Music subscribers seem indifferent to the feature, if any. This is included in their monthly cost and Apple bears any increased fees associated with licensing these songs.
Lossless audio has been a tough sell because many listeners can distinguish premium quality beyond a certain threshold – and many people don’t care enough to try.
Spatial Audio offers a more practical and potentially tangible marketing angle. That’s why it’s the future, for Apple, Amazon, Sony, Tidal, Dolby and a plethora of other companies in the music industry.