[etchalon]

Apple Music is the streaming service.

The iTunes Store is the "purchase the file" store.

The iTunes Store sells M4A, which is a common open audio format.

The iTunes Store does not, however, sell lossless files, as far as I know. Apple Lossless (ALAC) is only available when streaming from Apple Music.

[shmerl]

I prefer to buy lossless formats. For playback I can encode them in Opus. M4A is not a proper open format, it's patent encumbered.

[iggldiggl]

The patents on AAC-LC (which is all that really matters when encoding at medium to high bitrates, and that very much applies to the files sold by the iTunes store, too) should have expired by now, given that it dates from 1997, and indeed Fedora has been including an AAC-LC encoder since late 2017.