It seems that Apple’s Spatial Audio, introduced in May of 2021, has been proving to be a great addition to Apple Music and that it draws more listeners to Apple’s music-streaming platform, reports AppleInsider.
More than half of Apple Music subs are listening to Spatial Audio
Spatial Audio is a feature that Apple announced during the WWDC conference on May 17 and then was launched in late June of last year. The feature brings a more immersive sound experience to Apple Music and of course, supported earbuds and headphones. Now, Apple executives have shared some statistics on how this feature has been appreciated by Apple Music subs and listeners. Apple stated that more than half of Apple Music’s subscribers are actually listening in Spatial Audio. On top of that, Cupertino has also stated that record labels that have remastered their music in Spatial Audio are seeing a substantial increase in the number of listens.
Let’s look at some examples. “The Weeknd” had re-released the 2016 album “Starboy” in order to support Spatial Audio, and first-time listeners increased by a staggering 20%. This number comes eight weeks following the launch of the re-released album, in comparison to the eight weeks before it.
Billie Eilish saw the same growth for her “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go”, while Post Malone’s “Hollywood’s Bleeding” acquired 40% more listens, and Taylor Swift’s “Lover” gained a whopping 50% more listens.
Apple has also said that these increases are not only limited to relatively recent music. For example, The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” increased its first-time listeners by 50%, and then 40% of those listeners went on to listen to more music by the band.
Rachel Newman, Apple Music’s global head of editorial and content, stated that there is a huge uptick in artists’ back catalog thanks to them giving their fans a new way of listening to their music. She added that part of the key to this success was making sure that Spatial Audio is highly accessible to all kinds of artists at all different levels.
Spatial Audio gives you an immersive music-listening experience
Spatial Audio is seen as the main difference between Apple Music and its rivals that makes Cupertino’s music-streaming service stand out. The other feature that also contributes to that is Lossless audio, announced at the same time as Spatial Audio back in May of last year.
Now, every song in the Apple Music library is available in Lossless audio. Although this feature contributes to the overall success of Apple Music, according to Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats Oliver Schusser, it is more of a niche feature in comparison to Spatial Audio.
The thing with Lossless audio, according to Schusser, is that it doesn’t play on every type of headphone set with Bluetooth or wireless connection in the world. For that, Apple had a feature for the mass market that works on pretty much every device and where people would notice a difference in their music listening experience.
He added that Apple Music subscribers listening to music in Spatial Audio are growing in numbers “really, really fast”, and this growth is exceeding Apple’s expectations.
However, Apple has not released any specific numbers on how many tracks are available in Spatial Audio. According to Billboard, the feature launched with a few thousand songs and has since grown sevenfold.
For those of you who don’t know, Spatial Audio is a feature, powered by Dolby Atmos, which makes so the sound is surrounding you and when you listen to music in Spatial Audio, you can immerse yourself in the music as if it is playing all around you. If you want to know more about Spatial Audio and is it any good, you can as well read our article where our Rado M tests Spatial Audio and explains it.
