Chrome 56 beta, expected to be released in a week, adds native support for FLAC music format
Chrome 56 is currently in the beta channel and should hit stable in about a week. When released, it will bring support for the FLAC audio codec directly in the browser.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google's FLAC move lands about a month after Chrome 55 brought offline music and video downloads to Android, continuing a stretch where each Chrome release has expanded what the browser handles as a media player rather than just a document viewer. Native FLAC means lossless audio plays directly in the tab, with no plugin or helper app standing between a site and its audio stream.
First-order effects
- Web developers and music services can now embed lossless FLAC playback in pages without requiring visitors to install extensions or external players, since Chrome 56 decodes the format natively once it hits stable in roughly a week.
Second-order effects
- Streaming and download-based music sellers gain a browser-native path to higher-fidelity offerings on the web, while developers of audio-playback extensions and plugins lose one of their remaining reasons to exist inside Chrome.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across these releases — offline media in Chrome 55, native FLAC here, then Chrome 66 blocking autoplaying sound by default and eventually Chrome 76 blocking Flash outright — points toward browsers absorbing media handling into core code while squeezing out third-party plugins, giving Google growing control over how audio and video behave on the web.
The trend: Chrome is steadily internalizing media capabilities — codecs, offline storage, playback policy — that previously depended on plugins and extensions, tightening Google's control over web multimedia.