Support Mounts for High-Res Audio Streaming

This week all three major labels (Universal, Sony and Warners), Pandora and the RIAA all announced support for studio quality hi-res audio for music streaming. The support addresses the compressed and sonically inferior mp3's currently used for most music streams, and could potentially result in the addition of premium audio tiers on all the major streaming platforms. A recent study has also indicated that there is a growing market for hi-res audio, finding that "85 percentof U.S. consumers say audio quality is "very important" to US consumers; 48 percentare willing to pay more for better audio quality;and perhaps most significantly that "71 percentof existing music streaming subscribers are interested in the option of studio quality sound."" Read more on the pros and cons of hi-res audio offerings here.