Apple Music offering 10% higher royalty for songs in spatial audio

In December 2023, a report from Bloomberg claimed that Apple is planning to incentivize artists and label partners to offer songs in spatial audio (more specifically, to master songs in the Dolby Atmos format) on Apple Music to increase the number of songs in spatial audio on the music-streaming platform. However, there were no exact details about the incentive that the company was planning to offer. That’s changing today.

According to a new report from Music Business Worldwide, Apple has sent an update to label partners notifying them that it will offer up to a 10% higher royalty rate for songs that are in spatial audio compared to songs that aren’t in spatial audio. Apple says that it will start paying the incentive with this month’s (January 2024) royalty payments. As the previous report had claimed, artists and label partners will get the incentive on a song in spatial audio even if the listener plays the song with spatial audio disabled.

Apple Music and spatial audio

In the update, Apple claims that over 90% of subscribers of Apple Music have tried spatial audio on the platform, and the number of songs in spatial audio on the music streaming service has increased by 5,000% since the launch of spatial audio on Apple Music. According to the company, artists and label partners can see the incentive that the tech giant is offering as a reward for mastering a song in spatial audio or as compensation for the additional amount of effort required for mastering a song in spatial audio.

Author's Note: This move from Apple could pressurize other music streaming services that support spatial audio, such as Amazon Prime Music, to incentivize artists and label partners to offer songs in spatial audio on their platforms. With that, more artists and label partners could start offering songs in spatial audio, increasing the availability of spatial audio worldwide. So, Apple's decision benefits artists as well as listeners.