There is a notion of ‘reference’ in audio and visual information. You can get reference speakers, headphones, and monitors - their role is to reproduce the information without ‘color’. They present ‘faithfully’. This is what is often meant by ‘listen as X intended,’ although to be honest the interest of many audiophiles is to set up a listening environment that does impart some color while remaining faithful to the artistic choices in the mix of the original music. And mixing _is_ an art.

The article suggests, and I agree, that by making what are in effect unauthorized remixes of these works, Apple are interfering with what the artist intended.

Eddie Cue, Apple SVP of Services (in charge of Apple Music) is quoted in the Verge article [1] on this as saying, “This requires somebody who’s a sound engineer, and the artist to sit back and listen, and really make the right calls and what the right things to do are. It’s a process that takes time, but it’s worth it.” Of course you note he says this requires the artist, not present in Marvin Gaye’s case and likely most others, and time, which it is implied is not being given to this process in the article above.

The visual analogy in the article is apt - imagine Apple were revisiting their movie library - including old classics like The Maltese Falcon - and applying a process that makes them viewable in simulated 3D — but that, even further — if that person tries to view it with equipment that doesn’t support the head-turning 3D effect - they see it in an _altered_ version of 2D from the original. And this now becomes canon for a certain group of people - this version that is a byproduct of an effort to reverse the effect of a series of creative decisions made to make a derivative work of the original, done without, in this analogy, the input of the director or cinematographer.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525028/apple-music-spati...

I imagine the artist approved a (stereo) mix they heard on decent studio monitors and maybe stereo headphones too. I’m not sure how they’d feel about someone else then creating an atmos/spacial audio version without their involvement. Mixing is integral to the artistic part of making recorded music.

I’d be interested to know whether the tracks appearing on Apple Music are being created from the original tracks/stems (i.e. properly remixed), or whether an algorithm is being applied to the same stereo mixdown that would have created a standard (stereo) master.

They are remixed by the original engineers (or at least, an engineer.) Some of them are mixed better than others.

Or what happens with derived works? When you listen to a Coldplay song... do you follow their intent or Kraftwerk's intent? Oh no!

Or music that was composed before modern audio equipment - "If Bach had known about spatial audio! I know he would have loved it" :D

Stockhausen would have been like: ‘Yo dawg…’ :)