How Sony nearly ruled spatial audio—until Apple changed music

Sony 360 – Sony rolled out its 360 Reality Audio concept at CES 2019, banking on a streaming-and-hardware ecosystem to make immersive music feel inevitable. Apple’s move in 2021—pairing Dolby Atmos with head tracking across AirPods, iPhones, iPads, Macs and Beats—turned

The first time spatial audio felt like a promise, it came with a familiar name on the CES stage.

In 2019, Sony announced its 360 Reality Audio spatial audio format at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The pitch sounded sweeping: this was the future of music. Sony didn’t just build a codec and hope for adoption—it tried to pull the whole music and devices stack with it. from major artists and record labels to streaming services and Sony’s own audio hardware.

But a few years later, it became clear that “future of music” doesn’t mean “future owned by you.” Spatial audio didn’t just grow—it changed shape. And when Apple decided to wrap Dolby’s approach into its own ecosystem, Sony’s format struggled to stay central.

Sony’s big bet at the center of immersive music

Sony’s 360 Reality Audio arrived with heavyweight backing and an ambitious plan. The concept had musical royalty behind it, including Pharrell Williams and Mark Ronson. It also leaned on powerful labels such as Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. alongside streaming services including Tidal and Amazon Music.

Sony’s strategy was built around its personal audio business. The company aimed to integrate 360 Reality Audio into headphones, earbuds, and speakers. It also planned to court music streaming platforms to adopt the audio format. use its music recording arm to entice musicians to record albums in the audio format. and license the format to audio manufacturers willing to pay.

Yet even as immersive audio became a defining feature of digital music habits by the turn of the decade, Sony failed to foresee that it wouldn’t be a key player in that future.

To understand why, it helps to see the market that Sony was walking into.

Spatial audio’s rise, and two competing paths

“Immersive audio” is the listener experience of being surrounded by audio from all directions. “Spatial audio” is the set of technologies used to create that experience, and the terms are often used interchangeably.

In the 2010s, spatial audio gained momentum in gaming and movies. Dolby Laboratories debuted Dolby Atmos spatial audio in 2012 at the premiere of Pixar’s “Brave.” DTS, Inc. followed with DTS:X at CES 2015.

By 2019, both Sony’s 360 Reality Audio and Dolby’s Atmos started appearing on music streaming services. Tidal and Amazon Music were early adopters of the idea.

At the time, Atmos access was narrower than what many consumers might expect later on. In 2019, Atmos was available to Tidal subscribers with compatible home theater equipment and to Amazon Music subscribers with an Echo Studio speaker.

Sony and Dolby were chasing the same emerging market. but Sony’s business model depended on a level of consumer hardware readiness and adoption that wasn’t there yet. Personalized spatial audio wasn’t common in consumer headphones. manufacturers weren’t yet investing heavily in the hardware or digital signal processing. and Sony was prioritizing headphone personalization before it created a way for third-party manufacturers to join in.

The personalization was real—just not effortless.

To enjoy a personalized version of 360 Reality Audio. users had to complete an ear-mapping exercise in the Sony Headphones Connect app. which is now called Sound Connect. The personalized aspect was limited to Sony headphones. and the technology captured ear shape to deliver the best possible immersive audio experience.

Sony’s WH-1000XM3 over-ear headphones and WF-1000XM3 earbuds didn’t have built-in spatial-awareness hardware. Instead, users needed to upload clear photos of their ears into the app so Sony could create a personalized spatial audio sound field.

Even so, Sony’s format did spread beyond its own devices. It showed up in home theater products from Denon, KEF, McIntosh, and Sennheiser, alongside Sony’s own home theater speakers and AVRs. Support also appeared on streaming platform side—on top of Tidal, Deezer, and Amazon Music.

Still, the system never became as frictionless as what came next.

When Apple made spatial audio unavoidable

The shift landed in the summer of 2021, and it arrived with Apple’s signature ability to turn hardware and software into one story.

Apple announced that Apple Music and several generations of its devices—AirPods, iPhones, Macs, iPads, and Beats headphones—would support Dolby Atmos streaming and spatial audio with head tracking.

This mattered because it meant spatial audio suddenly moved from “seek it out” to “it’s already in your pocket.” With that software update, millions of spatial audio-enabled devices were already in consumers’ hands.

Apple also helped push the broader term “spatial audio” into something that felt like Apple’s own lane. But the more decisive move was how the experience worked.

Apple didn’t require users to go through a detailed ear-anatomy capture process. Its approach opened up head-tracking capabilities to existing Apple hardware. That gave Apple an edge over Sony, which could never capture a meaningful share of the US smartphone, tablet, or laptop market.

Apple’s first-gen AirPods Pro and second-gen AirPods were nearly two years old by the time of the announcement, and both had the hardware for spatial awareness.

Apple also leveraged Dolby Atmos licensing to avoid rebuilding the format from scratch. Artists could create music in Dolby’s mature Atmos spatial audio format and upload it directly to Apple Music without Apple having to create a spatial audio format itself. Apple’s spatial audio in its hardware mainly handled head tracking for personalization.

Sony, by contrast, tried to do it all—and the work stayed on the consumer’s side.

On top of Sony’s more tedious personalization process, Apple had something Sony didn’t: a consolidated streaming audience.

In the second quarter of 2021, Apple Music alone had nearly as many subscribers as Amazon Music, Deezer, and Tidal combined.

The timing couldn’t have been sharper. Sony’s 360 Reality Audio and Dolby’s Atmos launched on select music streaming services at the same time in 2019. but the market wasn’t ready yet. In 2019, spatial audio music libraries were minuscule, and personal consumer audio hardware hadn’t hopped on the wave.

By 2021, the ground was different.

Apple won in the way it often wins: by controlling its ecosystem. From the iPhone in your pocket to the platform you use to stream music, Apple calls the shots. Spatial audio could be marketed as a byproduct of its ecosystem. while Sony positioned its spatial audio format as a high-end listening concept that users had to actively seek out.

There was also a gap in how much each company explained what consumers were really getting.

Sony was forthright about 360 Reality Audio capabilities. noting that “speaker systems which project sound in all directions will be able to reproduce a 360 Reality Audio experience.” Apple. in this telling. didn’t mention the huge difference between listening to Atmos on a phone’s tiny speakers versus on a multi-speaker setup. Apple also didn’t really explain how spatial audio with Dolby Atmos worked—only that it did. with little effort on the consumer’s end.

At the point of maximum adoption, ease mattered more than detail.

What Sony has left—and what it seems to prioritize now

By 2026, Sony’s 360 Reality Audio is still kicking in. It can be found in Sony soundbars, high-end receivers, and more.

Still, Atmos’s dominance has left a mark. Tidal—an early adopter of Sony’s 360 Reality Audio—dropped support for Sony’s spatial audio format to focus on encoding more of its catalog in Dolby Atmos.

Sony’s attention has also drifted toward fine-tuning its headphones’ digital signal processing to virtually upmix stereo tracks rather than pushing 360 Reality Audio itself to consumers. Sony still advertises its audio format on consumer headphones’ webpages. but its virtual upmixing technologies appear to take the spotlight first.

The company’s WH-1000XM6 headphones were Sony’s first to feature Sony 360 Spatial Sound. an upmixing technology that isn’t walled behind a streaming service. 360 Spatial Sound works like JBL’s Spatial Sound and Bose’s Immersive Audio. using the headphones’ processor to run an in-house spatial upmixing algorithm that simulates 3D audio.

The catch is that Sony’s format war left it without a universal standard. Without something standardized—like the one Sony tried to make popular—proprietary spatial upmixes are described as unreliable and capable of degrading audio quality.

Dolby and Apple, in contrast, are framed here as delivering the best spatial audio music streaming experience because “good things happen inside a closed ecosystem.”

Sony’s story, then, isn’t one of failure in invention. It’s a story of momentum slipping away in the middle of a format fight.

Sony committed early and fiercely to market innovation. It just couldn’t keep up with the format that Dolby was positioned to win—and Apple helped realize.

Sony 360 Reality Audio Apple spatial audio Dolby Atmos CES 2019 Apple Music AirPods Pro head tracking Tidal Amazon Music audio upmixing cybersecurity