In 2021, Spotify announced a new HiFi subscription tier for higher quality audio – one of the top requested features from customers. However, the feature became indefinitely delayed.
After years of little news, rumours are surfacing about the new plan. According to Bloomberg, it will launch later this year. It’s said to be an add-on for existing users and will cost around an additional $5 per month for improved audio, as well as new tools and features for creating playlists and managing libraries.
Spotify recently increased prices in the US and UK, a typical move for streaming services before introducing a shake-up in plans or a big new feature that we’ve seen from Max, Disney+ and Netflix.
That means that users with a Spotify Premium subscription with the lossless audio add-on will pay £16.99/$16.99 per month. That’s more expensive than other rivals such as Deezer and Tidal, which cost £11.99/$11.99 and £10.99/$10.99 respectively.
We don’t yet know if this add-on will be available to users on the free Spotify plan, which is ad-supported.
The original announcement claimed that “Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality,” although we assume this will start in major countries such as the UK and the US.
Spotify HiFi has been long overdue as many other rival music streaming services offer an equivalent subscription tier including Tidal, Amazon Music, Qobuz and Deezer. In fact, some go higher than CD quality (16bit/44kHz) with Hi-Res up to 24bit/192kHz.
Previously, the highest quality from Spotify was 320kbps compressed via the Premium subscription, but HiFi would take things to a CD-quality, lossless audio format available on your ‘device and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers’.
Which speakers will support Spotify HiFi remains to be seen, but the firm said in 2021 that it was “working with some of the world’s biggest speaker manufacturers to make Spotify HiFi accessible to as many fans as possible through Spotify Connect.”
“High quality audio means more info, there are things you will not hear if you don’t have a good sound system. It’s really important just because we make music that [we] want to be heard in the way that it was made,” said Billie Eilish during the original announcement.