Apple Wants To Please Audiophiles: Wants Higher Quality Music

If you have ever downloaded a music track from Apple iTunes, a few of you might be shocked to know that the quality of the song you have purchased is not the highest possible quality you could receive. Apple and the music industry knows this, and they probably did this from the beginning because of how technology was back nearly a decade ago. But times are different now, and higher quality music is in demand. Disk space is no longer really a concern these days, so why not give people the choice of having the highest possible quality? That is what Apple is asking themselves, and a few people in the music biz seem to agree. It’s an interesting issue to consider, depending on the perspective. For most people, this isn’t an issue at all — a song they here in 16 bit versus 24 bit will be negligible at best, and they’ll be happy to keep the files small. For others, however, the higher quality would be very noticeable (audiophiles included). There are a few hurdles. One could see where the music industry might be hesitant to give up higher quality recordings for fear that they will spread online and that piracy would ensue. But piracy is going to happen either way. There is also a lack of mobile devices that actually support 24-bit audio, so that would also need to change in the future. But this is an opportunity for Apple and for the music industry to make more money. So, if you want higher quality audio from iTunes, it looks like you might be getting it very soon, but you’ll pay for it.