To date, this hi-fi audio is nowhere to be seen, notes The Verge. Even the ‘further details’ that the app maker promised did not appear.
The Spotify HiFi service would provide CD quality music to go to offer. So far, the highest possible quality on Spotify has been around 320 kilobits per second (kbps), a measure of how much information is stored per second of music. A CD has an audio quality of 1,411 kbps.
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Catching up with competition
By offering a higher quality subscription, Spotify would have wanted to catch up with competitors such as Amazon Music and Tidal. Those two services offered this audio quality for a higher subscription price in February.
In June, Apple took it a step further and added “lossless audio” without charging additional subscription fees. Amazon and Tidal soon dropped the additional costs.
Since February, some information about Spotify HiFi: users has occasionally leaked spotting in May, for example, a ‘HiFi’ icon briefly at the bottom of the app. But Spotify remained stubbornly silent about the new subscription.
Lossless often not necessary
Incidentally, such high audio quality is not necessarily necessary to enjoy music. Most audio hardware is built for bitrates up to 320 kbps, and can’t play high quality audio in a way that you can hear much of a difference.
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