Finding Dolby Atmos tracks on Apple Music was pure hell – until I tried this app

Apple Music’s Spatial Audio (aka Dolby Atmos) selections count among that music streaming service’s best features, and are certainly a strong draw for any listener who wants to experience albums and tracks mixed in a new, immersive format that can make regular stereo mixes sound bland in comparison.

Spatial Audio on Apple Music can be experienced using the best headphones, but if you happen to own an Apple TV 4K, it can also be played back over the best Dolby Atmos soundbars or a surround sound speaker system. All it takes is an Apple Music subscription and the patience to track down music on the service that’s been mixed in Spatial Audio.

I say “patience” for a very real reason: finding specific Spatial Audio tracks on Apple Music can be a time-consuming project. That’s because Apple doesn’t always clearly tag relevant content – sometimes a single track on an album will have an Atmos mix, but the album itself will be simply tagged as being “Lossless.” Typically, the only way to find out if a track is in Spatial Audio is to play it, and then look for a Dolby Atmos tag in the Apple Music app window. Apple does make an effort to promote new Spatial Audio additions to its service within the app, but finding which tracks in your existing library have been converted to Dolby Atmos can take a lot of digging.

Ben Dodson is keenly aware of Apple’s Music Dolby Atmos shortcomings. The software developer and creator of Music Library Tracker, an iOS app that monitors your Apple Music collection and alerts you when any tracks have been added or deleted, recently added a feature that lets you scan your full library for Spatial Audio tracks. Any tracks that have been upgraded for Spatial Audio appear in a new Apple Music playlist, and the app can send you notifications for new tracks in your library that get the Spatial Audio treatment.