Lossless gains for iTunes?

From Gizmodo… Apple Lossless on the Way to iTunes?

Having whined at length about the service offered by Apple’s iTunes Music Store, I certainly hope so. Tracks encoded at 128kbps are fine for quick’n'easy download purposes, but pretty pathetic when you’re paying for them, especially when you can often get actual CDs from Amazon for only a little more. I know the price issue is largely due to extreme money-grabbing by the record industry, but still… Apple knew all of that before they set up the store. Thanks to this unfavourable combination of quality and price, I’ve bought maybe nine or ten tracks from the iTMS, certainly no more.

I would have been happy with a two-tier mp3/AAC service (128kbps and 320kbps, for example) but lossless compression would be fantastic, bringing us one large step closer to the “music on demand” ideal. Of course, this could all be just another frothy internet rumour, but if not, the next question is: how much will the lossless downloads cost? If Apple don’t compete with Amazon’s prices, the whole thing could die a very early death, but if they can absorb the extra storage/bandwidth costs, I’ll be a very happy punter.