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Comment by DIVx0 | Hacker News Reader

It feels like Apple released the lossless Apple Music update prematurely. I'd expect them to do the lossless update at the same time as introducing a refresh of their high end gear that is able to take advantage of the upgrade.

If my speculation is correct, did they do it early to get the jump on another platform? That also does not seem like an Apple style move.

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It's been long reported that Apple has been undergoing a strategic shift to put more focus on their services business, and this seems like some more evidence of that. It's certainly a very "non-Apple" thing to do based on how they've operated for the past 2 decades. The release of lossless audio and the upcoming release of Apple Music on Android are two major features that add zero value or lock-in pressure for Apple hardware but add real value for subscribers of Apple Music.

Maybe their services teams are finally starting to be given leeway to operate as real businesses and do things to grow their revenue rather than just operate as growth channels for Apple hardware as they always have in the past.

Spotify hi-fi was announced a few months ago and is launching soon.

It's not a good look for them. It looks like they are afraid that Spotify will solidify its position.

Rough for Spotify - since Apple is including theirs at no extra cost, it becomes tough for Spotify to justify charging extra for it. So it goes from a feature that makes them money, to a feature that instead costs them money in engineering resources and bandwidth, before they even release it.

That depends if you believe Spotify users will switch to Apple just for that feature... if they won't, Spotify can likely still charge extra for it. Folks are pretty tied in to ecosystems at this point: if you've bought audio hardware that supports Spotify but not Apple, you're not going to switch.

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