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Spotify HiFi rumors: Expected release date, pricing and more
In February 2021, Spotify announced a CD-quality lossless music streaming experience with a new HiFi tier. While the company initially targeted to launch it sometime in 2021, the Spotify HiFi plan never saw the light of day. Fast forward to today, and we finally have more details about Spotify’s Supremium tier.
What is Spotify HiFi
When you stream music over the internet, apps like Spotify compress it to consume less internet bandwidth. The service compromises some bits of the music file to better use the available bandwidth.
With the Spotify HiFi plan, the company aims to meet the growing user demand for high-quality music streaming. The music streaming giant promises CD-quality lossless audio format on your phone, desktop, and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers. You can check our dedicated posts to learn more about Spotify HiFi, drawbacks and its impact on the music streaming industry as a whole.
According to The Verge, Spotify won’t simply add lossless audio tracks to its new plan and call it a day. The Supremium tier is expected to offer the ability to create playlists with AI, advanced mixing tools to customize the order of playlists by beats per minute, 30 hours of audiobook listening every month, a soundcheck add-on to learn more about your listening pattern, and more.
If you are new to lossless music streaming, read our guide to learn more about superior-quality music.
When will Spotify HiFi come out
Spotify initially wanted to release the HiFi plan in late 2021, but due to licensing negotiations and ever-changing industry trends, the company’s ambitious plan kept facing delays.
While we don’t have the official word on an exact date for the Spotify HiFi launch and rollout, Bloomberg reports that the lossless streaming service will arrive later this year.
Spotify HiFi availability
Spotify is available in around 180 markets in 60 languages. However, don’t expect Spotify HiFi to be available in all regions from day one. There is a high chance of Spotify limiting the HiFi tier to specific regions only. Looking at past trends, subscribers in the US and Europe should be first in line to experience Spotify’s take on lossless audio and other premium features.
How much will Spotify HiFi cost?
Last year, Spotify surveyed several Premium subscribers regarding a possible $19.99 monthly Platinum tier. A Redditor also discovered the same price while digging into the app’s code. However, it’s all speculation for now. Spotify can surprise us with a lower price tag as well.
Do note that the $19.99 tag can be a placeholder as Spotify’s biggest rivals with deep pockets already offer CD-quality subscription plans at a much lower asking price. Apple Music and Amazon Music have bundled lossless audio with their existing plans only.
It can be one of the reasons why Spotify had to delay its HiFi plan and pack more features on top of lossless audio to justify the high subscription fee. We expect Spotify to keep the Supremium tier anywhere between $15 to $20. The company may also offer a free trial to existing subscribers to try the HiFi plan.
Will Spotify HiFi have better sound quality than Tidal?
While we don’t have any technical details of Spotify HiFi’s streaming quality, the company did offer 1,411kbps streams to Premium subscribers in 2017. If we consider the same, it is quite an improvement over the current audio quality (Very High setting) in Spotify Premium, which tops out at 320kbps. But how does it compare to Tidal?
Tidal has three audio settings: Normal, HiFi, and Master. The latter two are part of its expensive HiFi Plus plan and offer maximum sound quality with compatible headphones. To put it into numbers, the HiFi audio clips are CD-quality lossless FLAC files streaming at 1,411kbps.
MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) is where Tidal shines and may have the upper hand over Spotify HiFi. It delivers 2,304-9,216 kbps audio in FLAC or WAV files. Do note that you will need capable headphones to get the best out of high-resolution audio files on Tidal.
Although the MQA library is slim, Tidal is working with partners to bring more tracks to the collection. In July 2021, the company collaborated with Warner Music Group to add millions of MQA tracks to the catalog. Looking at the numbers, Tidal should have a better quality than Spotify HiFi. But we will hold our final judgment until we take Spotify HiFi for a spin.
How many songs will be available on Spotify HiFi?
Spotify Premium offers a catalog of over 100 million songs. The company has yet to share any details regarding the HiFi library. Looking at the competition, both Qobuz and Amazon offer 60 million tracks in CD quality. We don’t expect anything less from Spotify when it joins the lossless trend.
The music streaming market is going through an interesting phase. Spotify is still the undisputed king, but Apple Music and Amazon Music are catching up quickly, and we can’t wait to see the company’s lossless implementation.