The rumours were true! Read the official confirmation of the Apple Music lossless tier, plus the addition of Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos.
You can read our original rumour story below.
Rumours have been building over the past few weeks around the launch of a new Apple Music HiFi tier alongside the third generation of Apple AirPods, and we've now had a potential launch-date leak as well.
According to rumours site AppleTrack, we can expect the announcement to land on May 18 in the US (well ahead of the tech giant's June 7 WWDC event) via a press release rather than the usual launch show event.
This date coincides with Google's I/O event, at which it will likely announce the new Google Pixel 6, so it would make sense for Apple to try and steal some of its competitor's thunder by revealing its own big products on that day.
No information is concrete at this stage, but from past leaks we're expecting this CD-quality music tier to cost the same as the regular individual Apple Music subscription – $9.99 / £9.99 / AU$11.99.
Apple teaser
As MacRumors has discovered, Apple itself is pushing out some teaser material that lends extra weight to the imminent launch of its HiFi streaming tier.
In the company's Music app, a teaser video has begun to appear in the app's Browse tab, with a 'coming soon' message alongside the text, "Get ready—music is about to change forever".
While this doesn't necessarily support the specific May 18 date, or even explicitly refer to the HiFi tier, it does strongly indicate we'll be seeing it arrive soon, and coupled with recent rumours we expect we might. Either way, we'll find out on Tuesday.