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Apple appears to hit goal of making entire Apple Music catalog available in Lossless by year’s end

When Apple Music announced support for Lossless and Dolby Atmos a few months ago, the company said the catalog would start with 20 million songs with Lossless support and would have all its 90 million songs in the quality by the end of the year. As of December 28, Apple appears to have reached the goal.

While you may have songs in your library with only the Apple Digital Master label, it’s likely that it’s reminiscent of an iTunes purchase, since the company announced that none of the audio content bought on iTunes would feature Lossless or Spatial Audio support.

9to5Mac can’t confirm that each of Apple Music’s 90 million songs are actually in Lossless, but after searching for a ton of artists, we couldn’t find a single, EP, album, collection, or greatest hits collection that wasn’t available in Lossless.

When Apple announced support for this higher quality, it generated a lot of controversy, as users can’t stream Lossless content wearing Apple’s popular AirPods. Not only that but even AirPods Max can’t stream in Lossless, even with a wired connection.

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Apple notes that users must install iOS 14.6, iPadOS 14.6, macOS 11.4, or tvOS 14.6 or later to take advantage of songs in Lossless, although if they plan to listen to them with headphones, they must use a wired connection. With HomePod 15.1, for example, users can stream songs in Lossless using the original HomePod or HomePod mini.

Apple didn’t state how many songs currently feature Hi-Res Lossless and Dolby Atmos labels, although streaming in Hi-Res Lossless requires an external DAC, and Dolby Atmos needs a proper master from the artists’ side.

As of now, it’s unlike that the company will bring all its catalog to Dolby Atmos or Hi-Res Lossless, but you can probably listen to the latest records with the best quality available, such as ABBA’s Voyage and Taylor Swift’s Red (Taylor’s Version).

With Apple seemingly fulfilling its goal of making the entire Apple Music catalog available in Lossless, the company reaches another “end of the year promise,” like it did Swift Playgrounds 4 and SharePlay support on the Mac. The long-awaited Universal Control, on the other hand, is now scheduled to be released in 2022. But we can’t have it all, can we?

Can you still find a song without this higher-quality support? If so, tell us in the comment section below.

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