I'd think it was an algorithm as well. Lots of music out there. I am not too hung up on the lossy atmos issue. How many years did we all spend listening to lossy DD 5.1? Heck, we still do on many occasions. I'd say less compression and less loss on a music atmos track than say a movie track that includes 4K HDR video as well. Like I said, there are some really fun tracks that I play quite often. You could say..." I just can't enough, I just can't get enough..."
Atmos music, just like previous multi-channel audio before it, will never be mainstream. Apple is way too optimistic about what they call spatial audio.
"I think this is going to take over everything. It’s the way I want to listen to music when I’m in my car. It’s going to be the way I listen to music immediately with my AirPods. It’s going to be the way I listen to music in my house. In a way, it won’t feel very good when I’m listening to something that’s not Dolby Atmos because it’s so good. It’s like when I’m watching HD, it’s hard to go back.” [Eddy Cue is Apple’s senior vice president of services and the person who oversees Apple Music ]
Atmos is a movie sound format, just like previous multi-channel sound formats. It's not going to work. We can circle back to this thread in 3-4 years and see if Atmos music has dominated. AirPods are not the way anyone that appreciates music will use to listen to their favorite sounds, this is the zenith of arrogance on part of Apple.
"Problem is, with much of the Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music I’ve sampled
so far, it doesn’t seem like everyone is making those right calls. It’s a hit-or-miss game of exploration, and songs that truly showcase the immersive potential of Atmos are more often the exception than the rule. In many cases, spatial audio tracks have an artificial wideness to them, unfamiliar placement of vocals and instrumentation, and just sound…
off. Distant? Too reverb-y? Pick your preferred interpretation. Yet, Apple is so confident in Apple Music’s spatial audio that essentially overnight it became the default for millions of customers listening with AirPods." [Chris Welch, The Verge]
The above has been some of my critiques of the Cinema sound as well, sound mixers don't know what do with this format.