polymnia

Anyone know if this high-quality music is served to a connected Sonos system? I assume yes, but I haven't checked. 

Edit: I am running S2 software that supports high res audio on my Sonos system. 

sdw2001 said:

I’m a musician who doesn’t even subscribe to Apple Music to begin with. I listen to podcasts mostly . Also, unless you are using really fantastic equipment and have a great ear, you’re not going to hear the difference between a 256 stream it 1000 “lossless” stream. 

So, just here to yuck someone’s yum?

There are a non-trivial number of Apple users who have nice audio gear and decent ears. Apple was smart to go wide first with lossy streaming at competitive rates. The streaming battlefield is littered with fallen audiophile-specific services. With a solid conventional streaming business established, now is the time to stretch out to the well-heeled audio enthusiast market. We might be silly to care about the things we do, but we have money and are happy to pay a little extra to indulge ourselves. 

Does Appleinsider have any info on what, if any, increase in the Cloud Storage quota comes with the Pro subscription? I've got double digit TB's of client assets & working files that currently live in a Dropbox for Business unlimited storage account. Dropbox is a great service and I love having my assets server in the cloud, but the Business tier is not cheap. If I could consolidate my Adobe & Dropbox bill into one service with unlimited storage, I'd come out way ahead. Not to mention, the Adobe Cloud will certainly offer improvements to the Mac/iOS/iPadOS round-trip workflow.

thrang said:

Was Beats "worth" $3bn though? There is a lot less buzz arounds Beats lately it seems...

Beats music had all the deals in place to allow Apple Music to hit the ground running. It was really the kickoff of the big Services push of the last several years. The headphones are a nice add-on to the music service, but certainly not the main act. 

If Apple follows the category leader in smart speakers (at least as far as longevity and building a real business of marketing 100% smart audio components) they will offer unusually long software support for AirPods as compared with their other products.

Not to say they WILL follow Sonos' precedent in long-term software support, but Sonos track record of running a real business in this category suggests they will at least consider the policies of Sonos before diverging from them. Everyone else in the category that I can think of is either a small product line under a diversified consumer brand or a much more niche player, often audiophile-focused. The Alexas & Google speakers seem to be points of entry into the profit centers of Amazon & Google, not a core line of profitable product and these companies seem to feel little concern for discontinuing models or services in these product lines. The electronics brands' products (Heos, Bose) seem more customer-focused, but without the benefit of continuously delivering customers (read: private information) to other profit centers of the business, you have to wonder how long until the manufacturers lose interest and move on. The audiophile-grade devices operate on a different model entirely, and I think it is safe to exclude them from consideration—no major brands are running a business like Bang & Olufsen or McIntosh and I doubt Apple has any interest, either.