Quick Summary
Select LG TVs can now enjoy Dolby Atmos music on Apple Music for a more immersive listening experience.
LG is offering a 3-month free trial so you can try it out before subscribing to Apple Music.
LG's range of televisions are celebrated as some of the best TVs you can buy and things are getting a little better if you're a music fan, thanks to a free update.
The update for OLED and QNED (2018 and later) models running webOS 4.0 and higher will enable Dolby Atmos for Apple Music for the first time. That will allow access to a more immersive audio experience so that if feels like you're right in the middle of the music.
To help LG TV owners benefit, there's going to be a 3-month free trial available so you can test it out – and you'll find that the Dolby Atmos music is clearly labelled so you know what you're listening to.
Many LG TV models, such as the LG C3 OLED support Dolby Atmos from their built-in speakers, and while this can deliver a more immersive sound experience than TVs without this feature, using external speakers can often produce better results.
Indeed, LG goes on to state that a connected LG soundbar will deliver the Dolby Atmos audio (even if your TV doesn't support it natively). We'd assume that it will work with other brand Dolby Atmos soundbars and speakers, but that hasn't yet been confirmed.
What is Dolby Atmos music?
Over the last couple of years, Dolby Atmos has made the jump from a cinema experience over to music. The principle is the same as the experience you'd get at the movies, with Dolby Atmos aiming to deliver a more immersive listening experience. That should make it sound like the music is enveloping you rather than just coming from a single point.
You'll often hear the term "spatial audio" used, a phrase that Apple coined when it announced iOS 14 in 2020. The announcement was muddied by talking of head tracking at the same time, when spatial audio was really just surround sound by a different name.
As it panned out, it's Dolby Atmos encoding that's providing most of the "spatial audio" on Apple Music, with some users loving the richer sound experience and some finding that it's sometimes a little hit and miss.
Dolby Atmos isn’t the only route to immersive audio as Sony 360 Reality Audio aims to deliver much the same effect. Apple Music's Dolby Atmos music can be experienced through speakers such as the Apple HomePod and Sonos Era 300.
Once your 3-month trial has passed, you'll be expected to pay the £10.99 a month subscription.
