Spotify’s new hi-fi music streaming service is coming later this year – here’s what you need to know about it.
When it arrives later this year, Spotify HiFi will deliver some of your favorite songs in lossless Hi-Res Audio – similar to what Tidal offers with its Tidal HiFi service. According to Spotify, high-quality music streaming is consistently one of the most requested new features by its users who, previously, have been limited to 320kbps. Worse, folks who don’t have Premium are only getting half of that (160kbps) which is equivalent to listening to an MP3. HiFi, on the other hand, will offer CD-quality, lossless audio at upwards of 1411kpbs – offering over four times the amount of data you currently hear when streaming a song. The service will be available in “select markets” to start, and while Spotify hasn’t said exactly how much the service will cost just yet, it sounds like it’s going to be more than the basic Spotify Premium price of $9.99 / £9.99 / AU$11.99 per month and there’s no guarantee that every song in the entire Spotify catalog will have a HiFi version available. That said, while details are still a bit thin about Spotify HiFi, we’ve done our best to collect all the reporting that’s out there and collate it into a single reference guide. According to a Five Things to Know About Spotify HiFi blog post, Spotify says the new service will be available later in 2021 – and it will be available as an upgrade to Premium. “Beginning later this year, Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi and listen to their favorite songs the way artists intended.” That select markets bit is worth focusing on as it means we won’t see Spotify HiFi going live in every territory at the same time.
