Apple Music Has Terrible Audio Quality

The first song we're using for comparison is Angel of Death by Slayer. I noticed an immediate difference between Apple Music and Spotify. YT Music had the same version as Spotify.

I ripped it directly from Apple Music and Spotify myself. Let's take a look at their waveforms.

It turns out, Apple Music has the (latest) 2024 remaster. Spotify has the 2013 remaster. I happen to have a copy of the original CD release of this album, and the 2013 remaster is much closer than the 2024 one. The 2024 version is closer to a new mix than a remaster, it sounds completely different. 2013 is just louder and more clipped than the CD. Apple Music is bad here.

Next, Black Skinhead by Kanye. I remastered Yeezus for myself a couple of days back. I used the iTunes master specifically. I shouldn't have.

Yeezus has a unique master for iTunes. This master is a "Mastered for iTunes" or "Apple Digital Master". From the waveforms, it's clear that the Spotify version has way more clipping than Apple Music. Even after gain-matching, Apple Music's waveform looked better. There was slightly more dynamic range.

But Apple Music sounds horrible. There's distortion everywhere. It's a mess. Even though Spotify has way more clipping, it still sounds several times better. It's not even close. At least with Angel of Death, it sounded different and was bordering the subjectivity threshold. This was objectively worse.

I also noticed that Spotify offers more masters than Apple Music. Take Pink Floyd. Some of their albums have 50+ masters. Apple Music offers only the latest. Take The Beatles. Spotify offers more masters. Spotify makes it clear which master you're listening to. Apple Music offers fewer options, the different masters are harder to find, and they don't make it clear which one is which. It's very ambiguous. A trend you'll notice with albums before the 2000s is that remasters are worse than the original.

Lossless audio doesn't matter for listening. The audio industry peddles this snake oil for money.

Apple Music's biggest selling point is its audio quality. But the truth is that out of all DSPs, Apple Music is objectively the worst. Every DSP I've ripped from over the years have used the same master. Apple, trying to differentiate itself, ends up being worse. Lossless doesn't matter when the actual content is worse.

As nerdy as I am about audio, I'm always pragmatic about it. My criticism of Apple Music isn't about codecs, bitrate or sample rate. Those things don't matter much as most people think. It's about the music itself. It's just bad, man. And it isn't just a problem with old music. Yeezus came out in 2013! There are people out there who think Yeezus was bad because they've only listened to the distorted mess AM/iTunes offers.

I'm not asking you to rip CDs or buy vinyls (and for the record, vinyls are overrated). I'm simply hoping this convinces you to switch to Spotify/YTM/Tidal/literally anything other than Apple Music.