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Spotify Hifi To Offer CD Quality Streaming

Spotify has announced that Spotify HiFi will be available later this year and “will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio format to your device and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers, which means fans will be able to experience more depth and clarity while enjoying their favourite tracks”.

Spotify has pulled out the big guns for the launch video, with Billie Eilish and Finneas speaking about the importance of high-quality audio options for creators and fans.

“Artists and fans have told us that sound quality is important to them. We agree, and that’s why we announced Spotify HiFi,” said Spotify.

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”.

Spotify noted that high-quality music streaming is consistently one of the most requested new features by its users.

Spotify HiFi will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio format to a device and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers, which means fans will be able to experience more depth and clarity while enjoying their favourite tracks.

Spotify says that ubiquity is at the core of everything the company does, and that it is working with some of the world’s biggest speaker manufacturers to make Spotify HiFi accessible to as many fans as possible through Spotify Connect.

HiFi will be coupled with Spotify’s user experience, and will begin rolling out in select markets later this year, with more details coming soon.

Artists and fans have told us that sound quality is important to them. We agree, and that’s why we announced Spotify HiFi.

As the leading subscription music service, Spotify Hifi will give competitors like Tidal and Amazon Music a run for their money.

When a song is turned into an MP3, certain seemingly ‘inessential’ parts of the data have to be stripped out to compress the song into a reasonable file size, which audiophiles take issue with as this causes songs to lose their texture and nuance.

Using lossless compression, Spotify will allow users to hear a song closer to the way it was intended to be heard in the recording studio.

Spotify HiFi will offer higher-quality audio than the service's current $9.99 monthly Premium plan does.

Amazon rolled out Amazon Music HD in 2019 and the lossless plan costs $14.99 per month (or $12.99 for Prime customers).

Tidal, which has supported high-resolution audio since its very beginning, is priced at $19.99 monthly for the ‘Hi-Fi’ plan. Tidal also offers what it calls ‘Tidal Masters’ that exceed high-resolution 96 kHz / 24 bit audio.

Apple Music is yet to offer any kind of lossless streaming tier, despite Apple selling the very high-end AirPods Max headphones.