Back in February 2021, Spotify made a bold promise to roll out lossless music streaming before the year was out. Fast forward more than a year later, and there’s still no sign of Spotify HiFi.
So, what’s the deal? Spotify has been frustratingly tight-lipped about the fate of Spotify HiFi, but the company has let slip a few details about the missing service.
Here’s what we know–and don’t know–about when Spotify HiFi might finally arrive.
What is Spotify HiFi?
First announced back in February 2021, Spotify HiFi was described as a way for Spotify Premium users to “upgrade their sound quality” to a “CD-quality, lossless audio format.”
Typically, “CD-quality” means streaming audio encoded with a 16-bit depth and a 44.1kHz sampling rate.
But the key term here is “lossless,” which means that the audio stream contains exactly the same sonic detail as its source.
The main selling point here is that you’d be hearing the music in the precise way the artist intended–and indeed, Spotify posted a video in which Billie Eilish and Finneas extolled the virtues of lossless audio streaming.
As it stands, Spotify streams audio at 320kbps in the “lossy” Ogg Vorbis format, which means the audio stream is losing a fair amount of detail in the interest of conserving bandwidth.
When will Spotify HiFi come out?
The short answer is that we don’t know when Spotify HiFi will arrive, beyond the fact that it has been delayed indefinitely.
Following months of silence about the issue, Spotify finally did speak up about Spotify HiFi at the beginning of 2022, if only to say that “we don’t have timing details to share yet.”
At the time, we reached out to Spotify for more details, but a rep would only say that the company did “not have anything further to share on HiFi beyond the excitement for the future launch.
While Spotify HiFi hasn’t officially arrived yet, a “HiFi” icon was spotted in the Spotify app back in May 2021, while a leaked “Hi, HiFi” video made the rounds a few months later.
When was Spotify HiFi supposed to come out?
Spotify never gave a precise release date for Spotify HiFi, but during its 2021 announcement, it said the feature would arrive “later this year” in “select” markets.
Of course, it’s fair to say that Spotify HiFi missed its launch window by at least half a year.
Why hasn’t Spotify HiFi come out yet?
Good question. Back in February, Spotify CEO Daniel Ed blamed “licensing” issues when asked about the fate of Spotify HiFi during a company earnings call. Here’s the exact quote, as reported by TechCrunch:
“Many of the features that we talk about and especially that’s related to music ends up into licensing,” Ek told investors. “So I can’t really announce any specifics on this other than to say that we’re in constant dialogue with our partners to bring this to market.”
There is another reason that Spotify might have delayed Spotify HiFi: because it got caught flat-footed by Apple and Amazon.
Just three months after the Spotify HiFi announcement, Amazon and Apple both announced (separately, but on the same day) that they would begin offering lossless, high-resolution, and spatial audio music tracks, all for no extra charge. (Apple was completely new to lossless and spatial audio streaming, while Amazon had previously been charging extra for lossless and spatial tracks.)
Following the Amazon and Apple announcements, the prospect of paying extra (most likely) for only CD-quality music and (probably) no spatial audio began to lose its luster, so perhaps Spotify chose to retreat and regroup.
How much will Spotify HiFi cost?
Again, we don’t know, although Spotify did suggest–at least initially–that Spotify HiFi would cost something extra.
Here’s the not-so-subtle hint, bolded for emphasis: “Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi.”
So from the language in the original announcement, it sure sounded like Spotify intended Spotify HiFi to be an add-on, and not a feature that’s already included for Premium subscribers.
It’s also worth noting that Spotify tested CD-quality audio streams as early as 2017, and at that time, it charged an extra $7.50 a month for the privilege.
Again, though, Spotify never went into detail about how much–or even if–it would charge more for Spotify HiFi. And even if Spotify had initially been set to charge extra for lossless streaming, it could have changed those plans in light of the subsequent announcements from Amazon and Apple.
Will Spotify HiFi offer high-resolution music streaming?
Plenty of Spotify’s streaming music rivals, including Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, Qobuz, and Tidal, offer “high-resolution” music streaming–that is, audio that’s encoded at a higher resolution and sampling rate than CD-quality 16-bit/44.1kHz audio tracks.
Most industry types agree that 24-bit/48kHz is the threshold for high-resolution audio, and those streamers that support it deliver high-res streams all the way up to 24-bit/192kHz.
But Spotify never said anything about high-resolution audio in its initial Spotify HiFi announcement; all it promised was “CD-quality” audio, which qualifies as “hi-fi” but not “hi-res.”
Of course, it’s a matter of rather heated debate whether the human ear can actually tell the difference between CD-quality and high-resolution audio (or for that matter, whether most folks can discern the difference between lossy and lossless), but we won’t dive into that particular rabbit hole here.
Will Spotify HiFi offer spatial audio?
As with high-resolution audio, Spotify never said anything about spatial audio–that is, music tracks that have been encoded with 3D surround effects–in its Spotify HiFi announcement.
Meanwhile, Spotify competitors Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Tidal do offer spatial audio tracks in such formats as Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio.
Again, Spotify might actually have spatial audio plans in the works, but if it does, it hasn’t shown its cards yet.