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Nate Lanxon

Nate Lanxon is CNET UK's Senior Editor of News and Features, and covers every aspect of technology for Crave. He also enjoys popular-science books, obscure Japanese animation and plays 'technical metal' on the drums, whatever that is.

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Tuesday 18 December 2007, 3:47pm

Next for Apple: Lossless iTunes Store

They say once you've had FLAC, you don't go back. It was certainly true for me. And now I have an inkling Apple will add lossless music downloads to the iTunes Store within the next 12 months.

Apple adopted AAC as its standard music download format, not only because the creator of MP3 has named it the superior successor to its creation, but because it also allows for the embedding of DRM -- the ubiquitously despised method for preventing unauthorised copying. But there's another reason.

Before iPod, few players supported AAC. By choosing the format, Apple maintained the ecosystem it needed in order for the iTunes/iPod pairing to succeed -- a double act that fuels the sale of iPods, Apple's primary goal. As it did with Apple Lossless, Apple could have surely developed its own alternative to MP3, but it would have been pointless as the perfect, standardised, DRM-able option was available, and it didn't come from Microsoft.

But why lossless downloads?
Lossless audio is the audiophile's best friend, but the storage device's worst enemy -- it's sonically identical to CD audio, but at the cost of massive file sizes. Until recently, lossless audio wasn't an option for portable players. But now iPods come with up to 160GB of storage, lossless is a viable option for portable media, and pocketable audiophile earphones are within the reach of certain budgets (though of course iPods would surely be plugged into hi-fi equipment, too).

Apple has used its own lossless audio format since 2004 -- Apple Lossless Audio Codec, or ALAC. But why bother developing its own, when patent- and royalty-free options were already available? Firstly, some options weren't Mac-compatible. Others didn't support DRM. FLAC, arguably the most popular lossless codec, actively discourages the use of DRM, and Apple knows better than to anger a mob of hardcore geeks by shoving copy-protection into their open-source format.

But by not using FLAC -- a format rarely supported by players, bar Cowon, for example -- Apple ensures only its devices will work with Apple Lossless, thus a) maintaining the crucial ecosystem, and b) ensuring future sales of iPods, namely the expensive 160GB models.

With the current state of the music industry, innovation surrounding music consumption is vital. iTunes is not only the solitary music store capable of successfully monetising lossless downloads (due to its integration with iTunes/iPod), but it's also arguably the only one with a company behind it that will push for innovation until it's blue in the face.

Steve Jobs was recently named the most powerful businessman in the world by Fortune magazine. He was also the first to get a major record label to ditch DRM from its entire catalogue. iTunes and the iPod is not only perfectly geared up for lossless downloads, but it has the most powerful industry shaker-upper behind it, and a heap of potential new customers gagging to hand over their cash.

Give it 12 months.

28 Comments | Post a comment

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Comments on this post

Lossless would be nice, but I will certainly not accept a proprietary format. DRM on music seems to be going away, so offer us WavPack or FLAC instead of ALAC.

Posted by Torgrim on Tue 18 December, 2007 9:26 PM

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Lossless is still lossless. At least now when we burn to a CD to remove the DRM, we'll get out the same thing we put in rather than decompressing compressed, lossy audio then recompressing it.

Posted by Jamie on Tue 18 December, 2007 9:34 PM

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Any ipod which will run Rockbox will play your FLAC files, although you do lose itunes and DRM compatibility this way...

Posted by Anonymous on Tue 18 December, 2007 9:55 PM

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WHY, do tell, do people support Apple on the terms of Apple? you want to do it rite? buy a CD and rip it to what ever format you choose/ and dont support this ipod/itunes customer_as_slave bullshit

Posted by HMMM on Tue 18 December, 2007 10:08 PM

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AAC at 320 is pretty much lossless. I highly doubt even the most hardcore audiophile could tell the difference. What would be nice is 24 bit audio.

Posted by BJ Offke on Tue 18 December, 2007 10:10 PM

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Me too! I'd pay extra for 24 bit versions of my favorite musicians!

Posted by Keegs on Tue 18 December, 2007 11:06 PM

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Apple lossless files are smaller than FLAC files. I welcome lossless so I can apply ReplayGain normalization using the album setting. Of course if there's DRM preventing me from doing this - no sale. Next, the iPod needs to be able to store custom equalization settings and offer on-the-go playlist naming and editing. Ya, like that's ever going to happen. God I miss my Rio Karma sometimes.

Posted by John Skillman on Wed 19 December, 2007 12:03 AM

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Lossless will never be available on the iTunes store - it took long enough for 256K AAC to appear, and I doubt that 0.001% of the population could differentiate that from a CD. What would be the point of Apple providing such a format for such a small audience, which would take six times the disc space currently used. It is not going to happen - Apple's strategy is to appeal to a majority these days. For the very small proportion of audiophiles, they can rip lossless, or use higher AAC encoding.

Posted by Alex Cumbers on Wed 19 December, 2007 12:09 AM

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Too bad the music industry is so technically brain-dead. If they wanted to legitimately sell us new copies of old tunes, increasing the sample rate would be the ticket. Another great innovation would be including all the studio tracks so we could do our own remixes. Storage will continue to get more available and cheaper. Such great opportunities! Such a music rennaissance. Then you read interviews with the CEO of the largest recording company and you see that he has never understood technology and simply wants the "good old days" back. No wonder Steve Jobs pwns them. === btw, once you have lossless without DRM, format is irrelevant. Someone will write a converter and the conversion will be perfect since it is lossless.

Posted by yet another steve on Wed 19 December, 2007 12:21 AM

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In addition to Cowon some players from Trekstor and the now defunct Rio play FLACs. But lossless is lossless. As long as there's no DRM then it doesn't really matter what format the original purchased files are in as long as they can be decoded to PCM then they can be converted to <insert favourite lossless format here>.

Posted by Mike on Wed 19 December, 2007 10:21 AM

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I would be incredibly happy if there were a lossless store available on iTunes. This is of course assuming the prices were no higher than that of a regular CD (at least for full albums), and ideally without DRM (though I might be able to tolerate it if it's only got the same restrictions as non "plus" iTunes tracks, since I could just burn and re-rip without any quality loss). Honestly though I don't think we have to worry so much about DRM for a lossless store. The trend is already away from DRM, especially on iTunes. It also seems that Apple has identified that the people most concerned with DRM are also likely to be the people concerned with audio quality (notice that the iTunes plus tracks are also higher quality). I'd love a lossless store (I've been asking for one for years now), and am hopeful that it will turn out to be DRM free as well should it come into existence.

Posted by DrOct on Wed 19 December, 2007 3:12 PM

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I would be a bit disappointed if Apple launched a lossless store. Why? Because that's exactly what I have done at BitWorksMusic.com. FLAC--it's what's for dinner. (caveat: I am still re-uploading my catalog, so FLAC albums are still not back online, but.. very soon.)

Posted by davido on Wed 19 December, 2007 4:50 PM

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FLAC equal to CD what a POS! Get me DVDaudio or SuperCD! Some 5.1 surround with 1024 sample rate. The CD standard was built to fit in 80s disk tech. MP3 should be a free teaser. Real disk should have 5.1 and concert footage. That would be worth $20. 10 songs that sound no better than an new 8 track = Bull. Improve the music as much as the equipment has improved.

Posted by Anonymous on Wed 19 December, 2007 6:54 PM

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On my audiophile system, I can tell you that Apple lossless is not fully loss less. Something is getting lost during the conversion as compared to pure AIFF (16bits, 44.1kHz), it sounds less good ;-( olive ;-)

Posted by Perals on Wed 19 December, 2007 11:47 PM

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Well lossless really makes no sense to use because it's huge and clunky, also if you want to really determine whether something is lossless it should be possible just to rip a .wav of it, then an Apple Lossless or FLAC, convert that to a .wav and compare the CRC's, I am pretty sure they should be identical.

Posted by Sam on Thu 20 December, 2007 5:05 AM

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Lossless files get smaller the more computing power you throw at the compression process. So the files can be smaller than they are these days.

Posted by Chris on Thu 20 December, 2007 9:47 PM

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The statement "But by not using FLAC -- a format rarely supported by players, bar Cowon, for example..." is ill-informed. There are models from makes such as Meizu, Teclast and a dozen others that utilise the latest chip and can play not only FLAC but also APE. Apple is try to be smart but it is loosing loads of sales to innovative manufacturers based in China who produce models with none of the short comings (FM Radio is another one) of Apple.

Posted by Anonymous on Tue 25 December, 2007 8:52 PM

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FLAC and APE are very well established lossless formats; unlike ALAC that Apple is trying to push. To me quality of sound is very important to enjoy music. Therefore I use Hi-Fi equipment, unless I am out and about. I have over 500 CDs ripped as FLAC and APE files for audio streaming to hi-fi equipment. So when it came to getting a player for outdoor use, Apple lost out and I got an Meizu Miniplayer. I suspect there are thousands of others who are interested in the quality of sound and not muppets who buy anything Apple put on th market.

Posted by Anonymous on Fri 28 December, 2007 2:43 PM

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I have some 3,000+ CDs and I am keen on audio quality (but not keen enough for buy DVDaudio or SuperCD to replace them - though would pay $20 each for new ones). I have no interest in iTunes Store as I prefer to buy my CDs and burn the files. I do like the iTunes software and would like to use it with inexpensive disk to stream music to my home audio system. Ideally, I would like to connect my disk directly to the receiver and use my wireless network and iTunes (or an alternative that allows similar functionality - shuffle, playlists, etc.), I am holding off until the dust settles on the format issues and someone comes up with a good solution as I am not looking forward to burning those CDs again. Ideally, I could burn 2,000 of my most with the best option today, buy and burn with better formats has the emerge.

Posted by Dave on Tue 8 January, 2008 3:11 PM

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Lossless audio? Yeah, that's great, but what about lossless video?

Posted by John R. Sellers on Sat 12 January, 2008 10:09 AM

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Firstly, I'm pro-lossless (MP3 just don't cut the mustard, quality wise it's the easiest way to go back into the 1980's without a DeLorean) and want to use it BUT I'm seriously fed up with the format war primarily instigated by Apple and to a lesser extent, people like Sony. It's making people like me anti-major-corporation and ultimately will reduce their potential profits. Choosing equipment is so much harder than it needs to be. With proprietary formats I'm limited to the software that I'm using, the portable player itself, the device that I want to stream around my house with etc. Get this wrong and you either end up ripping again and again and/or have redundant equipment. I'm not anti-iPod, infact, I'd quite like one (I think they're pretty neat, cue boo's!) if it supported FLAC or non-proprietary equivalent. Surely with the rejection of DRM from most people, Apple will make so much more money from their store from both iPod and non-iPod users. It'd be the place that I'd start buying digital music from (regardless of iPod ownership), it's fairly simple and most major record labels are on board. A quick comparison: Me not buying iPod and not being able to play iTunes music store, Apple makes £0. Me not buying iPod and get all my music from iTunes music store in a FLAC type format > £0 Common sense prevails?

Posted by Neil Campbell on Tue 15 January, 2008 10:00 PM

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Try Linn Products for digital streamers that support FLAC and other open formats. It's an open player and well worth listening to...

Posted by Anonymous on Tue 5 February, 2008 9:40 PM

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favorited this one, brother

Posted by Francisjt on Mon 7 April, 2008 1:17 AM

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I just purchased my first song from iTunes store yesterday and I will never purchase another until Apple does offer Lossless for its entire catalogue. I use a hi-fi system to playback from iPod and iTunes and the 128K AAC audio that Apple currently offers is extremely poor quality indeed... even the iTunes Plus music which is 256K will be disappointing. While iTunes store may be convenient, I'd rather still buy CDs and get the maximum quality.

Posted by Anonymous on Sat 12 July, 2008 4:36 AM

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Conversion has never been so easy. If you still wanna buy IFPI songs, CDA is still the format to go. It ain't the so called "True audio definition yet (because of its 44.1k/16bits parameters), but has no artefacts and gives you the best music experience... Most importantly, many CD/DVD players can play it. Ah, Edu, but compact discs are not flexible, take my whole shelf and get scratched very easily! Hmmm... That's why I told what I told on the first line of my post. "Conversion has never been so easy". Use FLAC and do not support bullshits like the so called "protected music". If the majors were so worried about copyright protection, they have been taken actions in favor of it a long time ago. Now I've heard about iTunes Store recently threatening to close because US publishers want their compensations increased from 9 cents to 15 cents per track download. I never had a chance of buying a god damn thang from iTMS, been interested a few years ago but today I don't even care if this happened right now. Today I'm more favorable to the idea of discovering new music and supporting them. Seems like they are really with the eyes on the future. If I have to buy digital downloads, they should be from these guys. Magnatune, MusicIsHere!, Mindown, CDBaby... Great stores, great support, music free of protection schemes, some are sold in 320KBPS MP3, FLAC and even ogg vorbis, previews are more than 30 seconds (specially on CDBaby), well... The advantages are countless. Of course you're going to find some undesirable stuff on those places but you can discover great and outstanding ones as well. But for major acts, CD is yet a very accessible option. Buy them, and use FLAC as your music partner. I see lots of digital music networks, from Sonos to Logitech supporting this format out of the box, so... Go flac and never turn back!

Posted by Edu Camargo on Sun 19 October, 2008 9:59 PM

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One year later - WRONG!

Posted by Me on Sat 27 December, 2008 9:59 PM

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If you just take some time to surf around there are a few ways to remove DRM from apple audio ;) not so simple for video however. I welcome apple lossless downloads as i love lossles audio

Posted by Kal on Tue 13 January, 2009 11:44 PM

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Posted by pochemukers on Tue 27 January, 2009 9:28 AM

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