It has been confirmed by Apple that their new Apple Music service unveiled yesterday at the Apple WWDC 2015 developer conference, will only stream at 256kbps rather than the “industry standard“ of 320kbps.
Currently the services competitors Google Play Music, Tidal, Spotify and even Beats Music that was recently purchased by Apple, all stream their content up to 320kbps.
Apple maybe opting for the lower 256kbps to save users the added data consumption and its also Apple’s standard playback rate for existing iTunes tracks. The Apple Music streaming service consists of three elements, the music streaming service, a new radio service that offers a live music station named Beats 1 and Apple Music Connect.
Apple Music will be launching at the end of this month on June 30th and will available for free for three months to everyone. After which users have two pricing options to choose from, either a single subscription priced at $9.99 a month or a family subscription priced at $14.99 a month.
At launch the Music streaming service will support the Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, plus the Mac and PC. Apple Music will also be made available for Android devices later this year during the fall of 2015.
Source: Apple