Spotify has long insisted on streaming only compressed music. The company has now changed its mind: a HiFi subscription will become available in the course of this year.
For many music lovers, uncompressed music via a streaming service is the holy grail. Only then do you get the most out of it in terms of sound quality. This lossless quality is what made Tidal and Qobuz great.
Spotify was the first big music service and relies on a huge catalog. The traditional listening audience was not really audiophile. Apparently that is changing, because Spotify announces the new HiFi subscription. With uncompressed streams.
In addition, the company indicates that the streams will be in CD quality. That means – we think – 44.1 kHz / 16 bit. That’s still not hi-res as is offered by Tidal and Qobuz, among others. Perhaps that also means that the price for the HiFi subscription will prove to be competitive compared to hi-res streamers.
When
Spotify indicates that it will provide more information about the intended subscription in the near future. Eventually we guess it will be rolled out worldwide, if only because the music service indicates that lossless is one of the most requested features. Not entirely unjustified of course! For more info, see the YouTube clip here.