Why does it matter how much of the catalogue is high bitrate? That (IMO) is not the primary benefit of support. Quite simply, Apple Music is a huge service by number of subscribers, and providing support for it would be of utility to a large number of current Volumio subscribers, and would be a potential selling point towards adding more.
Thus far, I’ve seen nothing to indicate that Apple is pushing away developers who wish to integrate with AM, small or otherwise.
But, and it’s a very big but … there is no Apple music API available to Volumio that will work within the current framework… that’s pretty much “pushing away developers.” I really don’t understand why this keeps popping up. If you’re unhappy about this, then you should be addressing your issue to Apple.
It matters because as of now, I can access 92% of Apple music’s catalog in full quality without an app needing to be developed. Volumio has Airplay integration.
Now I would love to see Volumio interface with Apple Music natively for sure. I’m not holding my breath as everything I have seen so far suggests that Apple really wants to keep this within their ecosystem.
The current Airplay implementation is with AirPlay 1, which works but is far from ideal (though I am happy to note that the upstream shairport-sync project is actively working on Airplay 2 support)
To me, “pushing away developers” would be Apple throwing active obstacles in the path of implementors, and I’ve seen no evidence of this.
Perhaps a more productive discussion would involve talking about which features would need to be present in the Apple Music API to allow integration into Volumio.
Now that Apple is pushing for their HiRes ALAC files I think Volumio should catch up with it. If it is possible to implement Apple music via some sort of apple connect or similar like qobuz implementation Volumio should have it regardless…
Come on, Volumio. We need endpoint support for Apple Music HD , including for Apple Spatial Audio. And endpoint support for Amazon Music HD. Just pay for the developer tools and get this iterated, please! It’s about time. These via DLNA are NOT high definition. Thanks, in advance.
Kurt
+1 on the plugin
I vote for support Apple Music in VOLUMIO.
I took a quick look at the Apple MusicKit documentation, and I’m doubtful that it can be integrated with Volumio. It doesn’t seem to give access to the music stream or control of the audio output.
As a sanity check, does anybody know of any 3rd party streamer (besides Sonos) that integrates with Apple Music? Sonos is unique because they’ve had a long relationship with Apple (not to mention $1.7B in revenue).
Not a streamer, but Cider is a third party program for Mac and Windows that integrates Apple Music. https://github.com/ciderapp/Cider
Not sure if it’s changed since I last looked into it, but at the time they were still working on a solution to implement lossless. Not sure that it’s quite there yet.
From the Cider FAQ:
Does Cider supports Lossless Audio?
Cider does not currently support lossless audio. This is because the core software Apple has forced us to use does not yet support it. If one day Apple adds support for lossless audio to this software, we’ll add it to Cider. Cider only supports up to 256 kbps AAC at the moment.
Cider relies on Apple MusicKit (you can see it in their open source code). I’m not sure that MusicKit provides sufficient audio control for Volumio integration.
Blockquote As a sanity check, does anybody know of any 3rd party streamer (besides Sonos) that integrates with Apple Music? Sonos is unique because they’ve had a long relationship with Apple (not to mention $1.7B in revenue).
Currently I know of Bluesound, HiFi Rose and Cambridge
Also, I support getting Apple Music on Volumio