From CNN’s article on Apple Music:

Apple said its tracks will stream at 256 kilobits per second. That’s a bitrate similar to music files available on iTunes, but the Apple Music files are 20% smaller than competing streaming music services, including main rival Spotify.

Spotify’s audio files come in three sizes: 96 kbps, 160kbps and 320 kbps. Files with the highest quality are only available to paid subscribers. Apple Music doesn’t have a free version like Spotify does — all of its customers will have to pay $9.99 a month.

The article goes on to compare Apple’s 256 kbps against Spotify’s 320 kbps, pointing out (correctly) that Apple’s stream will save on your data plan (less data moves over the pipe) and complains (incorrectly) that “Apple Music will be streaming its tracks at a lower quality than its competition”.

Kirk McElhearn catches this error, writing:

What they don’t consider, however, is that AAC – also known as MP4 – is a much better codec. It won’t sound worse at that lower bit rate; it will sound just as good, if not better, than 320 kbps MP3 files. And, it saves you money on bandwidth.

While they point out that Spotify only uses 320 kbps for paid subscribers (others get 96 or 160 kbps), they still manage to say that Apple Music will sound worse. And they don’t point out that Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis files, which are much lower quality than either MP3 or AAC.

Nice catch, Kirk.