Music streaming services love original content, and some of them also love spatial audio. George Ezra is thus in a sweet spot with Amazon.
Tag: hi-res music
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More than 80% of Apple Music subscribers listen to spatial audio
Apple’s annual state-of-services post, this year written by services boss Eddy Cue, revealed new stats focused on its spatial audio feature.
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Apple Music takes spatial audio to Mercedes-Benz cars
Spatial audio is currently one of the key selling points for Apple Music, and now it’s making its way into one of the most logical environments for this technology
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Will Spotify buck hi-res trend and charge more for Hifi tier?
Judging from a leaked customer survey, Spotify may not have given up on the idea of charging more for hi-res music.
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Google may challenge Dolby Atmos with a new 3D audio format
Dolby’s Atmos 3D-audio format has been gaining a lot of momentum in music thanks to its adoption by Apple Music, Amazon Music and Tencent Music’s QQ Music among others.
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More than 40m Apple Music listeners have tried spatial audio
The launch of Apple’s iOS 15 software this week has brought with it some new features for Apple Music, including ‘dynamic headtracking’.
What’s that? A feature that reorients Apple’s spatial audio around the movements of the listener’s head, if they’re using the company’s AirPods Pro and AirPods Max ‘phones.
More than 40 million Apple Music listeners have already tried spatial audio on the service, with Apple having promoted the feature to them energetically since its launch earlier this year.
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Apple and Amazon ignite hi-res music streaming battle
The code leaks this weekend may have spoiled the surprise, but Apple Music is bringing higher quality music to its streaming service. But rather than charge extra for an ‘HD’ or ‘HiFi’ tier as rivals have done, Apple Music’s lossless audio feature will be available to all of its subscribers from June – for no added cost.
Reaction from one of those rivals, Amazon Music, was instant. The company announced that from now on, its Amazon Music HD tier will be available to its standard Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers, also at no extra cost. Current HD subscribers will pay the price of a regular subscription too.
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Amazon Music HD adds ‘thousands’ of tracks from UMG and WMG
We should clarify this headline quickly: Amazon Music HD already has many more tracks from Universal Music and Warner Music.
The news is that Amazon is working with the two labels to remaster thousands of tracks in ‘Ultra High Definition’ for its hi-res streaming service.
Amazon’s definition of Ultra HD is tracks with a bit depth of 24 bits and a sample rate of up to 192kHz, and it has more than 5m of them already. However, the bulk of Amazon Music HD’s catalogue is its 60m-plus ‘High Definition’ tracks – 16 bits / 44.1kHz.
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Hi-res streaming service Qobuz raises €10m funding round
Qobuz is the hi-res music streaming service founded in France, which has expanded to 12 countries so far. Now it has a new funding round to fuel further growth.
The company has raised €10m ($11.7m) from existing investors Nabuboto (the holding company of CEO Denis Thébaud’s company The Thébaud Group) and Canadian telco and media corporation Quebecor Group.
Qobuz said that its revenues grew by more than 45% in its last financial year, and that it is “now pursuing a major development plan… setting up a new management team and launching a recruitment plan that is unprecedented in the company’s history”.
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Amazon Music gets Latin music hub and exclusive Neil Young EP
Amazon Music is the latest streaming service to make a concerted push around music from Latin America, with its new ‘Amazon Music Lat!n’ hub. It will offer a mix of Latin playlists, original/exclusive tracks, interview and mini-documentary videos with artists, and podcasts.
There’s also a program called ‘Rompe’ to promote emerging artists in the US, Latin America and Spain; and a content brand called ‘Raices’ which will spotlight established artists – starting with Marc Anthony.
Amazon has also rebranded its ‘Fuego Latino’ playlist as ‘Platino’ for a new global push, with separate playlist brands for new tracks (‘Hoy’), classics (‘Clasicos’ and hits (er, ‘Hits’).
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Jazz Re:Fest to stream with MQA and Bluesound partnership
Another festival forced to switch from offline to online this year is Jazz Re:Fest in the UK. Its 2020 version will be held on 23 August, with four hours of performances streamed from a two-stage set in The Mill studios.
That way, artists will be able to perform their 30-minute sets while the other stage is being sanitised and prepared for the next act.
The event will be streamed on the YouTube channel of its parent organisation Jazz Re:Freshed, but there’s also a partnership with hi-res music firm MQA and Bluesound.
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Dolby and Avid get into the music distribution game
Digital music distribution is still a standalone business: either as an independent company or within the umbrella of a major label.
But distribution is also a feature for a growing number of technology companies: whether they start with music-creation, analytics, mastering or other tools for artists, adding the option to get music onto streaming services and download stores is increasingly the next step.
The latest example is called AvidPlay, and it’s been launched by Avid and Dolby. “Release your music on 150+ major streaming outlets around the world,” is the promise. “AvidPlay makes music distribution easy… get discovered, grow your fanbase, and keep 100% of your rights and earnings with no hidden fees.”