Thus, AAC at 256 kbps delivers near-lossless perception at roughly 1/5th the storage of CD audio.
The music industry has undergone significant changes with the advent of digital music distribution. The rise of online music stores and streaming services has led to a shift away from physical album sales. iTunes, launched in 2003, was one of the first popular digital music stores. In 2007, iTunes introduced the iTunes Plus program, which offered higher-quality audio files in the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format with a .m4a extension. itunes plus aac m4a
Although streaming (Apple Music, Spotify) now dominates, the iTunes Plus 256 kbps AAC standard persists in: Thus, AAC at 256 kbps delivers near-lossless perception