The music industry is extending its Hi-Res Music logo from downloaded songs to streamed songs to help consumers identify high-resolution recordings that meet the high-res music definition developed in 2014 by multiple industry groups.
The logo requirements for future high-res streaming services will be available on June 1, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said.
The Hi-Res Music logo, unveiled in 2015, complements the Hi-Res Audio logo licensed by the Japan Audio Society for use on compatible home and portable- audio products.
The music industry’s logo designates downloads and streams that deliver better-then-CD quality sound at a minimum 48kHz sampling rate with minimum 20-bit resolution. The files and streams must be sourced from studio masters meeting the same minimums. The masters include digital masters created from analog masters.
The logo program has been adopted by almost a dozen download services offering high-res music, RIAA said.
Multiple music codecs, including MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) and MPEG 4 Audio SLS, will support high-res music streaming, RIAA said. The codecs create efficient, streaming-friendly file sizes that make it practical to stream high-res music from the cloud.
Streaming services using those and other approved technologies will be allowed to display the Hi-Res Music logo on their landing page or next to an individual album or track in their libraries, RIAA said.
High-res streaming services using the logo will be able to stream a mix of high-res and non-high-res songs, but when streaming a high-res song, the sites’ UIs will display the logo. When the sites stream non-hi-res songs, “the logo is supposed to disappear, or some visual indication will happen to indicate that it is no longer hi-res,” an RIAA spokesperson told TWICE.
In addition, if the resolution of a high-res song drops below minimum requirements because of broadband-network congestion or other problems, the logo will disappear from the UI but will reappear when resolution spikes up again, the spokesperson said.
The logo announcement was made by the RIAA and its member companies in cooperation with the Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing, the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), and DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group.
Licensing inquiries can be directed to David Hughes at [email protected].
