How to make Music app behave more consistently when downloading purchased music?
The Music app is behaving very inconsistently when downloading purchased music to my MacBook Pro and iMac, particularly when lossless audio is available.
Sometimes it will download the standard purchased AAC files (44.1 kHz/256 kbps/m4a).
Sometimes it will download HLS files (lossless/.movpkg).
Sometimes it will download a mix of the two formats.
This brings up several questions:
• What determines which file format will be downloaded?
• Why aren't the downloaded lossless files in the same Apple Lossless (ALAC/m4a) format used when extracting audio from CDs?
• Why is a mix of the two formats (i.e., some songs in AAC, some in HLS) sometimes downloaded when purchasing an album?
• When an album is available for purchase in lossless format, why isn't a choice given as to which format will be purchased or downloaded? Some of the other services offering lossless/high-definition audio formats give the buyer a choice—either of format (for example, MP3/AAC/FLAC/WAV), or sample rate and resolution.
If an Apple representative has answers to these questions, I'd love to hear them.
One more thing…
Sometimes, regardless of format, the app will split up an album into two or more parts; the only way to consistently get the Music app to treat them as a single album is to copy the files to a folder on the desktop and then reimport them into Music.
What's up with that?
Thanks,
Creoirtronk
MacBook Pro (2020 and later)