Spotify may be the reigning champion of streaming music, but it's far from the only choice. Apple Music is a surprisingly competent app even on Android, and some of its recent additions make it an even better service. In May, Apple added lossless and spatial audio to its service at no additional cost, and with its latest app update, both are finally coming to Android.

Apple Music v3.6 has been in beta testing for a couple of months now, and it's officially arriving on the Play Store. Lossless audio support is, without a doubt, the most significant addition to the app. Although it wasn't available in the beta version, underlying code helped to leak the information days before Apple made it official. With this latest update, lossless and hi-res lossless options are now available for certain albums and singles — primarily new releases. Like on iOS, the Android settings for lossless do require specific speakers or headphones for high-quality playback.

Alongside lossless audio comes spatial audio, Apple's Dolby Atmos-equipped take on "3D sound." You'll need to look for supported albums or playlists to take advantage of spatial audio. According to the changelog, it'll only work on select "compatible devices," which is about as vague as a description can get. Spatial audio settings didn't show up for me on my Pixel 4a 5G, and I didn't notice any change in sound for spatial-supported tracks, so specific hardware may be required to get it up and running.

There's a couple of other minor changes in v3.6 too. Apple Music on Android now supports automatic crossfade. Unlike manual crossfade, which came to the app last fall, automatic mode chooses the best length based on whatever you're listening to at that moment. Finally, the changelog lists enhancements to library searches, though I didn't immediately notice any major differences in results.

Apple Music v3.6 is currently making its way to users via the Play Store, but if you'd rather not wait, you can download the APK from APK Mirror right now.

Apple Music Developer: Apple
Price: Free
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