HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

AppleInsider broke the news that iTunes Producer, the software labels use to submit music for inclusion to the iTMS, was updated to include support for tracks in the Apple Lossless format. Speculation that the iTMS may begin offering tracks in the lossless format have risen substantially ever since, but it’s probably safer to remain sceptical about it (read: don’t expect it any time soon). Apple most likely wants the submitted tracks in AL so they can have a “master” database; should they feel like offering iTMS purchases in another format than the current one (AAC/128kbps), they can use this master database to transcode the tracks.

Two additional notes while we’re on the subject:

1. while offerings in the Apple Lossless format from the iTMS probably aren’t to be expected any day now, that’ll change eventually. AL-encoded tracks will keep the ears of the audiophiles happy, will drive the sale of bigger-capacity iPods (since AL tracks are substantially larger in filesize than their AAC counterparts) and will most certainly be sold for more than the 99 cents you’re currently paying for that lossy 128kbps AAC tune, in order to keep the labels happy. This makes sense, business-wise. (Ars Technica thinks so too [via].)
2. you can bet that there’s a FairPlay wrapper from the Apple Lossless format. It is suggested that maybe DRM can’t be applied to AL—people, this is Apple. The only reason they went with Apple Lossless, apart from the company’s insane tendency to introduce a closed technology whenever it sees the chance, is so that they can easily wrap a lossless format with a DRM wrapper. Apple Lossless is the result of Apple playing with the free, GPL-licensed FLAC format, after all.