When Spotify HiFi is launched later this year, it will mean that you can listen to your favorite songs in lossless CD quality, which will help the Swedish company to reach the same quality level as many of the competitors (such as Tidal) already have.
According to Spotify, higher sound quality is something that is always high on the wish lists of people who demand new functionality. The service is currently able (if you have a Premium subscription) to stream at 320 kbps.
Higher resolution sound is also something Apple and Amazon have been catching on to lately, too Apple Lossless Audio and Amazon Music HD available to Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers at no extra cost. This may mean that they are getting ready for the launch of Spotify HiFi.
We have recently seen several indications that Spotify HiFi will be launched soon. We have seen screenshots of the Spotify HiFi logo in the app and also a Spotify HiFi video leaked by a Redditor.
Unfortunately, the service will first be launched in “selected markets”, and although Spotify has not said exactly how much the new service will cost, it seems as if it is a more expensive variant than Spotify Premium, which today costs 109 kroner in the month. By the way, there is no automaticity in which artists and songs will be played in the new quality, so when the service is first launched, there will probably be a transition period where much of the content must be reloaded in better quality.
We have good reason to believe that Spotify HiFi songs will be available for storage and download, so you can listen to them without an internet connection. This will allow you to take this audio library of lossless quality with you wherever you want.
Spotify HiFi: a sneak peek?
TechRadar was recently sent photos from a reader. The pictures show Spotify HiFi in use. We have not been able to confirm the authenticity of the images ourselves, but the quality, the font and the content strongly indicate that these are real issues.
The shared photos show the HiFi icon in the lower right corner of the app. They include text about the music played in 16-bit / 44.1 kHz quality – but the reader said that the music was not played in lossless quality.
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Later, there is a video that pretends to show a welcome tour in the new power mode, which has been leaked online. It was posted by Reddit user Nickx000x (via What Hi-Fi?) with the caption «Here’s a sneak peek at the upcoming HiFi onboarding process from modifying the app». It is supposed to give potential users of HiFi a behind-the-scenes tour.
Though Spotify has not verified the video’s legitimacy, it suggests that it has been leaked at all that the HiFi subscription will be launched pretty soon. In any case, Spotify itself has said that the service will be available “later in 2021”. A launch just around the corner is therefore not out of the question.
When will Spotify HiFi be launched?
According to a blog post at Spotify titled «Five Things to Know About Spotify HiFi» the new service will be launched sometime in 2021 – and it will be possible to upgrade from Premium.
“Later this year, Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade the sound quality of Spotify HiFi and hear their favorite songs the way the artist wanted them to be heard.”
These “selected markets” are worth a closer look, as this means that Spotify HiFi will not be launched worldwide at the same time. Previously, when Spotfiy has launched new functionality, the USA and Europe have often been the first to go out, but now that the service is available in 95 countries, it is difficult to predict where HiFi will appear first.
Another quirk on the launch date of Spotify HiFi is that it seems unlikely that all devices that support Spotify Connect will get the upgrade at the same time – which means that speakers and devices, such as Sonos One and PS5, can get HiFi earlier than older receivers and the like.
If you look at it closely, it is the case that the service, in one way or another, will be launched this year, but which units will receive support in 2021 is still uncertain.
How much will Spotify HiFi cost?
There is still no information on how much you have to spend for Spotify HiFi. The company says that further information about the service will come later this year, and thus one can do nothing but guess where HiFi is in terms of price.
If we had put money on a guess, we would probably have said that a realistic price range is somewhere between 150 and 200 kroner. We know that it will be more expensive than Spotify Premium – and it costs 109 kroner a month – so at least a fiver should be expected.
Another aspect that will clearly affect the price is the competitors. If you subscribe to Tidal HiFi, it costs 199 kroner a month. The price is also the same for services like Deezer HiFi. Some other competitors, which stream in high quality, are somewhat lower (Qobuz and Amazon Music HD, for example), so it is possible that Spotify is slightly lower than Tidal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W07MvWbuWkI
Power quality
How good sound quality will we get with Spotify HiFi? Reportedly, it should sound as good as on CD – and maybe better.
According to Spotify, Spotify HiFi will stream lossless CD quality to your playback devices. Ideally, these devices should be connected to a network and have Spotify Connect support. If you use wireless transmission such as Bluetooth, the quality will of course suffer.
This is a quality that is far better than what Spotfiy offers right now, namely 320 kpbs Vorbis, and the probability is high that you will now get sound quality on a par with Tidal, Deezer and maybe even Apple’s Digital Masters.
Speaking of Apple Digital Masters, it is not impossible that Spotify chooses to support a better sound quality than CD, with for example support for 96 KHz / 24 bit sound, but this is not something we have high expectations of.
What does “better sound quality” mean? In practice, so-called lossless audio formats have more details and more information than the compressed variants. This means that you can potentially discover new details in songs you are well acquainted with, details that may have been removed by the compression process. You can also experience that the sound space is a little bigger and clearer, but a lot depends on what kind of equipment you use to listen with.
Music catalog
What we would have liked to know more about when it comes to Spotify HiFi is how many – and which – songs from Spotify’s huge catalog (over 30 million songs) will be offered in lossless quality.
We expect that not all the songs on the service will have improved quality, but there may well be talk of millions of songs becoming available in lossless quality from launch.
Among these, there is a high probability that you will find the biggest hits from the big record companies that already deliver music in these formats to other services, while music distributed by smaller companies (as well as older music) will probably not be included in the load (at least not at first.)
We’ll keep an eye on the time to come, and hope that more information will find its way to the airwaves, so it’s worth trying to curb all thoughts of throwing the CD collection on the heap before we get a bigger overview of Spotify HiFi.
In any case, you will be able to take the music from Spotify HiFi with you on the go, even where there is no internet coverage. Some newer screenshots from Spotify HiFi announce that the function will also work with HiFi, and Spotify encourages downloading if you are traveling somewhere with poor reception conditions.
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