It was nearly four years ago that Spotify touted its next big feature for music lovers: lossless streaming, aka Spotify HiFi.
Finally, Spotify Premium users would get the chance to “upgrade their sound quality” from Spotify’s lossy 320Kbps Ogg Vobis codec to lossless CD-quality audio, with Billie Eilish and Finneas extoling the virtues of lossless Spotify HiFi streaming in a promotional video. The launch date for Spotify HiFi: “later this year,” meaning sometime before the end of 2021.
Left unsaid but implied in Spotify’s February 2021 announcement was that Premium subscribers would be charged extra for lossless streaming. How much extra wasn’t clear, but the whole “upgrade” wording sure made it sound like you’d have to pay more for Spotify HiFi, thus helping Spotify inch its way toward profitability.
The plan made perfect sense. After all, in early 2021, lossless and high-resolution music streaming was still a niche market occupied by the likes of Deezer, Qobuz, and (most of all) Tidal, with rates as high as $20 a month. (Spotify had already been testing a lossless add-on as early as 2017 at various price points.) So why shouldn’t Spotify charge extra for lossless music streaming too?
Three months later, Apple and Amazon came along and ruined everything.
Separately but on the same day, the two companies rolled out their own lossless streaming offerings. Effective immediately, both Apple and Amazon said they would go the lossless way, topping Spotify HiFi with support for not just CD-quality tunes but also high-resolution audio tracks all the way up to 24-bit/192kHz (CD-quality audio is limited to 16-bit/44.1kHz), with spatial audio to boot.
The capper? Apple and Amazon’s paid music streaming subscribers would get all those lossless tunes for no extra charge.
It was a clever move that neatly undercut Spotify’s HiFi ambitions while also blowing up the business models of the niche lossless streamers (all of whom had to drastically overhaul their pricing plans in the ensuing years). All of a sudden, Spotify didn’t want to talk about Spotify HiFi anymore.
It wasn’t until January 2022 that Spotify finally broached the subject of Spotify HiFi again, saying it was “excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users” but that “we don’t have timing details to share yet.” A month later, Spotify CEO David Ek blamed “licensing” issues for the delay.
Then followed months of stubborn silence, punctuated by rumors and leaks about Spotify HiFi’s fate. There was chatter in late 2022 about a supposed “Spotify Platinum” plan that would offer lossless audio along with “limited-ad” podcasts and other features. By June 2023, the rumored Spotify Platinum plan morphed into a rumored “Supremium” tier with lossless tunes and “expanded” access to audiobooks. Nearly a year later, word had it that “Supremium” had been replaced by a “Music Pro” add-on that packed lossless audio with “advanced mixing tunes.”
Finally in July 2024, Spotify’s Ek floated the idea of a “deluxe version of Spotify” with “all the benefits” of a standard Premium membership plus “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board, and some other things that I’m not ready to talk about yet.” Ek suggested the new “deluxe” Spotify (which has yet to arrive) might cost “something like $5 above the current premium tier.”
Behind the years-long delay, the rumors, and the trial balloons, it seemed like Spotify was casting about for a reason to charge extra for lossless music streaming—an argument that was tough to make given that Apple, Amazon, and others weren’t charging more for lossless tracks. (I’ve reached out to Spotify for comment.)
At last—perhaps for lack of a better idea—Spotify relented, announcing Wednesday that it would offer gratis lossless audio to its existing Premium subscribers, similar to what Apple and Amazon have been doing since mid-2021.
“The wait is finally over,” said Spotify VP Gustav Gyllenhammar in a press release. “We’ve taken time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality, ease of use, and clarity at every step, so you always know what’s happening under the hood. With Lossless, our premium users will now have an even better listening experience.”
Spotify Lossless (the “Spotify HiFi” moniker has apparently been banished) still has some drawbacks compared to lossless listening on Apple and Amazon; audio quality on Spotify is capped at 24-bit/44.1kHz, versus full-on 24-bit/192hHz for its competitors (good luck telling the difference, to be fair), and there’s no mention of native spatial audio support.
In any event, Spotify wound up singing Apple’s and Amazon’s tune when it came to lossless audio, folding it into its standard subscription plans for no extra charge. What else could it do?