Dr. Aix from Aix Records (a long time source of exceptional high resolution records) has a blog post about Apple Music lossless. No sure if I agree about his rather strong opinions of MQA, but it is interesting reading. Apple makes you go through a lot of hoops to add lossless music to their catalog (my bolding below):
"As a member of the Apple Music label family, I received an email from Apple with links to articles on the new formats and delivery requirements for 5.1 and Dolby Atmos mixes. Much to my dismay, a small label like AIX Records is prohibited from uploading surround music mixes to augment the currently available stereo catalog. I couldn’t believe it. The only way to add my Dolby Atmos mixes (75 of them or roughly 8% of the total Apple Music catalog currently available in Dolby Atmos) is to contract with an authorized encoding house. And they won’t do business with me because my catalog doesn’t generate enough revenue to make it worth their while. And besides, they would want a percentage of my revenue. Why should I share 20-25% of the money generated by my catalog with an encoding house when I already have the files and only need them to upload them to the Apple cloud? Despite several emails with a representative from Apple, they will not allow me to add my surround mixes to their service."
www.realhd-audio.com
"As a member of the Apple Music label family, I received an email from Apple with links to articles on the new formats and delivery requirements for 5.1 and Dolby Atmos mixes. Much to my dismay, a small label like AIX Records is prohibited from uploading surround music mixes to augment the currently available stereo catalog. I couldn’t believe it. The only way to add my Dolby Atmos mixes (75 of them or roughly 8% of the total Apple Music catalog currently available in Dolby Atmos) is to contract with an authorized encoding house. And they won’t do business with me because my catalog doesn’t generate enough revenue to make it worth their while. And besides, they would want a percentage of my revenue. Why should I share 20-25% of the money generated by my catalog with an encoding house when I already have the files and only need them to upload them to the Apple cloud? Despite several emails with a representative from Apple, they will not allow me to add my surround mixes to their service."
Apple Lossless Audio is Death Knell for MQA – Real HD-Audio
www.realhd-audio.com