I had the same observation about Google Play Music Radio's audio quality and came on here searching for the bit rate and codec thinking it must be lower for the

I had the same observation about Google Play Music Radio's audio quality and came on here searching for the bit rate and codec thinking it must be lower for the free radio product in order to segment and further differentiate the paid tier (many services like Spotify, Rdio, and Pandora do this). I'm using an external DAC+headphone amp. Also, note that the codec matters. AAC is supposedly twice as efficient as MP3. iTunes Radio, which streams at 256kbps AAC, sounds better to me.