Apple Music's Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless audio settings can use dramatically more mobile data than the standard High Quality option, making it worth checking your settings before streaming over cellular, particularly if your plan has a monthly cap. Apple's own estimates suggest a three-minute song uses about 6MB at High Quality, 36MB at Lossless and 145MB at Hi-Res Lossless, meaning an hour of continuous listening could consume anywhere from roughly 120MB to nearly 2.9GB depending on the setting chosen.

Scaled up, an hour of Lossless listening daily would use around 21.6GB a month, while the same habit at Hi-Res Lossless could approach 87GB. These figures are estimates rather than fixed values, since Apple's lossless compression (ALAC) varies with each recording, network conditions and equipment. iPhone users can manage usage by setting separate audio quality levels for cellular, Wi-Fi and downloads in Settings, or by downloading favourite tracks over Wi-Fi for offline listening. Notably, Bluetooth connections aren't truly lossless, so streaming to standard wireless headphones — including AirPods Max 2 without a USB-C cable — negates much of the benefit anyway, and Apple itself describes the audible difference from AAC as "virtually indistinguishable."