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What is MFiT (Mastered for iTunes) and why should I care?

You’ve probably seen the abbreviation MFiT floating around, and you’re probably wondering what it means for you when you’re mastering your song.

Apple has long been leading the charge of innovation in digital music. They developed a method for ensuring that audiophiles would have access to a near-lossless version of songs that they purchase digitally. That’s how MFiT was started.

MFiT stands for “Mastered For iTunes” and it refers to a specific process that allows you to deliver high quality master to Apple that can be sold through iTunes. Regular songs purchased through Apple are sold at 256kbps in an AAC format. But when you buy something that has been mastered for iTunes, you get the highest quality digital master possible

Only songs that have been mastered by Apple-certified mastering facilities can be submitted as MFiT. In order to be Apple-certified the master must be at least 24-bits, with a sample rate of at least 44.1kHz.

Why would I want to master my track for iTunes?

Apple’s platform is still one of the most popular for purchasing digital music. If you put countless hours recording your song at a high resolution with intricate parts or lots of “ear candy”, then you’d want to make sure it was (digitally) presented in the best possible way. MFiT makes sure of that. If you’re recording certain genres of music, such as Jazz, Opera or Orchestral, those audiences tend to want as high-quality of a recording as possible.

Does Aria offer MFiT?

Yes! Since we were built by a Grammy-award winning Mastering Engineer, we have an Apple-certified mastering facility. After your mastered song has completed, on the download page you’ll see a button for “Order Additional Formats”. That will give you the option to order Mastered For iTunes-certfied files that you can then upload to Apple. Please note that since these require some extra work, so files that are MFiT require an extra 2-3 day turnaround. We’ll email you a download link to the email address linked to your Aria account when they’re ready.