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You're looking at a lossless audio file from Apple Music or an iTunes library. ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) does for Apple what FLAC does for everyone else — it compresses audio to about 50–60% of its original size without losing a single sample. Decompress it and you get the exact original back, bit for bit.
Apple developed ALAC as a proprietary format in 2004, then open-sourced it in 2011. The format lives inside an M4A or MP4 container, which means a .m4a file might contain AAC (lossy) or ALAC (lossless) — the extension doesn't tell you which. Apple Music uses ALAC for its lossless streaming tier. FLAC technically compresses slightly better, but ALAC integrates seamlessly with the Apple ecosystem — iTunes, Music, AirPlay, HomePod.
Apple Music and iTunes play ALAC natively. VLC handles it on every platform. For Android or non-Apple devices, FLAC is the safer lossless format. If you're archiving a music collection and live in the Apple ecosystem, ALAC works perfectly. If you want maximum compatibility, FLAC is the universal choice.