The wait for a HiFi (high fidelity or lossless) streaming tier on Spotify could be much longer than we initially thought. The company is working on it but doesn’t have any details on a possible release date yet, a moderator on Spotify’s official community forums has confirmed.
“We know that HiFi quality audio is important to you. We feel the same, and we’re excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users in the future. But we don’t have timing details to share yet,” the moderator said. “We will of course update you here when we can.”
Spotify first announced its plans to introduce a HiFi streaming tier back in February 2021. The company back then said that the rollout will begin in select markets “later this year”. The music streaming biggie also added that it would have more details to share soon. But 2021 has already come to an end and Spotify HiFi is nowhere to be seen.
Now, when we were looking forward to a piece of good news from the company, its latest update makes things muddier than before. We have no ETA (estimated time of arrival) yet and the moderator’s statement doesn’t suggest the feature is anywhere close to a release. This is disappointing from Spotify.
Spotify is running out of time to introduce HiFi streaming
HiFi streaming means lossless, CD-quality music. It is essentially audio in its purest form as the sound comes from uncompressed music files. Spotify tested lossless music among a small group of users in the US back in 2017. But a wider public rollout never came. It’s been more than four years since the initial test run and the wait goes on.
In the meantime, several other music streaming apps have added a lossless streaming tier. The likes of Tidal, Deezer, Amazon Music and Apple Music all now offer CD-quality music to their users. The latter joined the fray last year, adding spatial audio and lossless streaming as a free add-on to its subscribers.
Perhaps this made Spotify delay its HiFi rollout and rethink the plan. Its initial plan was to charge extra for CD-quality music, on top of the existing Premium subscription. But Apple Music offering the feature for free means Spotify will suddenly become a more expensive service since they both currently cost the same. Nonetheless, whatever be the case, the company is running out of time to introduce a HiFi streaming tier. Hopefully, the wait won’t be much longer now.
2022-01-11 15:06:21