So, your songs are streaming slowly on Apple Music. What should you do? Here’s a fix you probably didn’t think about.
Apple Music Streaming Slowly? Are Your Songs Taking Forever to Play? Lossless Could be the Culprit and You Need to Turn it Off
Apple Music has certainly managed to make a dent in the music industry. It’s the go-to music streaming service for a lot of music lovers out there, and while it does get the job done in the best possible manner, it has its quirks, too.
The service requires an internet connection to stream music, obviously. While it works insanely well on a fiber connection or even 5G, sometimes it may slow down to a crawl. There could be a lot of reasons behind this. But, if you’re reading this, you probably blame your ISP at this point for all the slow streaming. After all, tapping on your favorite song means playback should be instant, yet it isn't.
I’m assuming you’ve tried all the tricks in the book, including switching over to some other DNS, giving your modem multiple restarts and spent hours on the customer help line to no solution whatsoever. There is a chance the problem could be at your end.
The problem? Lossless audio.
If this feature is turned on, it will automatically ping Apple’s server for a lossless copy of the song you want to stream. If it can’t be reached for any reason at all, or your internet is a tad too slow, then it will revert to the high quality version and may go lower if needed. So, before playback begins, your iPhone and iPad will fight for a lossless copy of the song from Apple before playing back whatever the next best thing is.
What’s the fix? Turn off lossless audio.
You can do this by going to Settings > Music > Audio Quality and turn off the Lossless Audio switch. Now launch the Music app again and stream any track at all. If streaming begins instantly, your problem has been solved forever. If it doesn't, then the only options you have left is either invest in a VPN or switch your ISP.
If you think lossless audio is doing wonders for your audio quality, you're only fooling yourself believing that, especially if you have regular pair of headphones or even just AirPods. You need an external DAC in order to listen to lossless with a special pair of headphones that supports it as will. Keeping the lossless switch turned on will download an extremely high quality music file but will only be played back in regular quality as your headphones do not support anything above regular quality audio.
You must be thinking - how much Apple Music sucks because it can't stream properly because of lossless audio enabled. Trust me, every single streaming service faces such as issue and it all boils down to how good your ISP is at handling all the data. Or, you refuse to accept that you do not need faster internet just yet. Maybe it's time, who knows!
source https://wccftech.com/how-to/fix-slow-apple-music-streaming-on-iphone-and-ipad-tutorial/