The time for audiophiles around the globe to rejoice has come, almost. High-fidelity listening was once a luxury but with exponential leaps in tech, it has become more and more accessible to everyone. Electronic music has already spearheaded this movement for making it commonplace, with sites like Bandcamp or Beatport offering non-compressed audio formats on sale. Yet, streaming music remains adhered to the long time industry standard of Mp3 format (or AAC) as the most used. That is to change however, with major announcements from two giants of the said industry, Spotify and Apple.
Earlier in February, the Swedish company removed the curtains from Hifi option of listening experience, which will arrive selectively in different regions from later this year. Its shrewd competitor Apple didn’t let this pass unheard, with the rumours from the grapevine suggesting that the Californian brand will be revealing a similar alternative in the coming weeks (probably on WWDC, held next month).
While this seems a monumental shift, in my opinion, this is a change that could have been implemented long ago. Pardon my software development knowledge (which is as good as my grandiose cooking skills), I am certain of the fact that most artists intending to distribute their music online have to do so by uploading WAV format of their productions. And last time I checked, changing from one audio extension to other took bare minimum of some minutes. Thus, my curiosity begs to ask why this feature took so much time in getting incorporated. One prominent name already having done this is TIDAL, however they are available only in US and have a limited library to explore.
Answer to my question above seems steep pricing at best, which would perhaps deter some listeners to not opt for the bespoke plans, and thus commercial failure. Other than that, this is a step forward, as it could mean listening to our favourite songs with better quality than ever.
What do you think?
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