That’s because the Airpods are using Bluetooth which is lossy by design, something else than Airplay. Under certain circumstances Airplay can be lossless up to 48/24. See Apple Music Lossless Mess Part 2: AirPlay - Bits and Bytes - Audiophile Style
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I guess if I have a Mac connected by USB to my PS Audio Directstream DAC that can handle up to 24/192 PCM. Then I can play through Apple Music on the Mac.
That will solve the airplay down sampling problem. Certainly not as convenient.
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I listen to Apple Music lossless high resolution frequently when out of the house. All you need is an iPhone or iPad and a small DAC connected to quality headphones via wire. I use a Dragonfly Cobalt or FiiO KA1 with Moon silver dragon cable to Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones.
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Library pro. I hope they mean: Roon. 
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Yes Apple Music is capable of lossless with wired connections. It can also do cd qualify over streamers using the original Airplay, not Airplay 2.
The reason I’d be excited about Spotify is their large library, custom playlists and Spotify Connect. Once you hand it off, it plays directly on the streamer and the phone is just a remote. So can control from any device with Spotify on it. I’d be happy with just cd quality but hires would be nice too.
So even if Apple offers lossless over Airplay 2, it’s still streaming from the phone. Not a great solution. They would need a handoff feature like they do with the HomePod. License that out to others.
They mention Studio Sound. Smells like MQA to me.
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god I wish
Anything is better than the non existing library management on Spotify at the moment.
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Speculation is that it’s spatial audio.
If it was MQA that would actually make a lot of sense. I think spotify would love the idea of using compression to get around the additional costs of streaming lossless.
That being said, no chance given the additional license fee. Spotify has learned the hard way, building your business on paying out royalties / licenses is hard…
I hope the Spotfy R&D are smarter than that.
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You can’t use lossy compression to stream losslessly.
I totally agree but Tidal made that argument, no doubt if it saved spotify a lot of money, I’m sure they’d have a stab at it.
Yeah I’ve got a headphone DAC s as well. But to be honest I never liked listening on headphones.
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Have they released lossless yet?
If not, nob off…
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It’s hard to carry a set of speakers with you when walking the dog or walking around. I don’t like anything sticking in my ears.
My solution… Don’t walk ‘em! 
Or adopt old dogs that can’t really go very much—that’s our secret.
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Back on Topic….the rumour mill continues….
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I am still firmly in the I’ll believe when I can subscribe, camp.
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At 20 or 25 bucks monthly is the rumor. No thanks.
I do think Spotify has made a cynical decision to say hey if want lossless its gonna cost you and they
could care less if you take it or not because its gonna cost them significantly more.
I’m done with Spotify for good.
In other words, Spotify doesn’t really want to offer lossless anymore after Apple spanked them by offering hi-res at no extra cost but they are too embarrassed not to eventually offer it.
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I think Spotify has the best curated playlists out of all the music services so i just transfer the lists to Qobuz or Apple.
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I think this is the best time for Qobuz really delivering a great sound quality and having a very large collection of albums/artists. And when using Qobuz I realized there is even a “special code” in the app to use https://soundiiz.com/ and seemessly convert all desired playlists from Spotify etc. to Qobuz.
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