Apple Music Lossless Not Working and Not Downloading

In short: After turning on “Lossless Audio” in the Music settings, you need to not only disable “Dolby Atmos” in the Music settings, but also to toggle the “Download in Dolby Atmos” to OFF to get Apple Music to stream and download in lossless.

You’ve noticed that some of the songs you’ve downloaded in your library aren’t downloaded in lossless quality even though you’ve set Apple Music lossless downloads turned on.

And yes, you’ve tried downloading these songs again after deleting them and being able to stream them with lossless audio, but they downloaded in bad quality again. Why?

If you’re new to Apple Music, just follow the steps inside this article and you should be able to solve Apple Music lossless not working and not showing, whether streaming or downloading.

You haven’t enabled the Lossless Audio settings

I know that you’re probably smart enough about this and you’ve set the audio quality to lossless, but there’s no harm in double-checking the Apple Music settings.

You’ll need to turn on Lossless Audio and then set the quality for Cellular Streaming, Wi-Fi Streaming, and Downloads to either Lossless or High-Resolution Lossless.

To enable Lossless Audio, open your iPhone’s Settings app and scroll down to tap Music. Under AUDIO, tap Audio Quality, then make sure the Lossless Audio toggle is on.

You should also set the audio quality for Cellular Streaming, Wi-Fi Streaming, and Downloads to either Lossless or High-Resolution Lossless, not High Quality.

Once you’ve enabled all of the lossless settings on Apple Music, you should get Apple Music lossless streaming and downloading working as well as showing.

Set Dolby Atmos to OFF

I’ve had an issue for a while where songs don’t download in lossless quality even though I’ve turned it on for downloads. They stream in lossless but as soon as they download, they are not.

I don’t use Dolby Atmos so I realized this was happening with those songs. To get them to download in lossless, you need to disable Dolby Atmos in Music settings.

Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, then tap on Music. You should see the Dolby Atmos option under AUDIO. Tap on Dolby Atmos and set it to Off.

When playing the Dolby Atmos version, I don’t think it’s possible to use lossless because it’s not recorded in lossless. You need to choose which version you want to listen to.

But wait, you’re not done yet. You also need to make sure the “Download in Dolby Atmos” is disabled. I think this should be done when you turn off Dolby Atmos but alas, this will work.

Make sure “Download in Dolby Atmos” is disabled

You’ll notice that not all of the songs in your library have this problem. In fact, a lot of other songs from Apple Music are correctly downloaded in lossless quality.

After many hours of troubleshooting, I’ve discovered the main reason why Apple Music is not downloading lossless audio, even though you’ve enabled lossless downloads.

This is because you have “Dolby Atmos” set to OFF and “Download in Dolby Atmos” set to ON. It’s actually not a bug, but it’s a poorly thought-out design flaw in Apple Music.

For songs that have both Dolby Atmos and lossless versions, Apple will download the Dolby Atmos version since AirPods, as of right now, cannot play lossless due to Bluetooth limitations.

Even if you’ve downloaded the lossless version, Music will prioritize the AAC format because it tries to play the Dolby Atmos version (which you’ve disabled, so it only plays in AAC Stereo).

What you need to do is turn “Download Dolby Atmos” OFF and re-download all of the songs in the lossless format, then you’ll be able to listen to them in full lossless quality.

There’s no point in deleting and redownloading your songs hoping to get the lossless version unless you’ve set the “Download in Dolby Atmos” setting to OFF.

Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, then tap on Music. You should see the option to enable or disable the Download in Dolby Atmos toggle. Make sure it’s OFF.

Once the Download in Dolby Atmos settings is disabled, be sure to remove all of your downloads and then re-download all of the lossless versions of the songs from Apple Music.

You’ll need to choose “Remove Downloads” not “Delete from Library” if you’re given the option between the two. If you want to learn more, please read this article.

If you follow the troubleshooting steps in this article, the “Apple Music lossless not working or not showing” problem, whether streaming or downloading, should’ve been solved.

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