You won’t find any ECM releases on Spotify. But you will now find an initial batch of releases from the venerable jazz label in better sound quality mastered for iTunes.

It's a sign that ECM, while not having any truck with streaming, is taking downloads that bit more seriously.

The label’s founder, Grammy-winning producer Manfred Eicher, supervised the remastering.

“For the digital domain,” he’s quoted on the ECM website, “the Mastered for iTunes format with its higher resolution makes it possible to get closer to the original production for each of the respective albums. With each mastering we’ve gone back to original sources. It was especially interesting, on the early titles, to work from the old analogue sources and see what it is possible to reveal in the 24-bit medium. It is a great relief not to be limited by the digital compression of old and to discover the air, an essential component, in the music again.”

It’s not all jazz by any means in the first batch, which includes New Series release Arvo Pärt classic album Tabula Rasa, and Steve Reich’s Octet/Music for a Large Ensemble/Violin Phase. The jazz titles include the highly influential 1970s Chick Corea album Return To Forever, and more recent albums by Tord Gustavsen and Vijay Iyer.

Mark Turner’s new album Lathe of Heaven to be released in early-September is the first brand new album to be mastered for iTunes by the label to this new specification.

All new titles where possible will be mastered for iTunes, the label adds.

Manfred Eicher, top (photo: Jörg Koopmann), with the cover of Lathe of Heaven, above.