The story of Spotify HiFi has had many twists and turns. It was first announced Over 3 years agoHowever, a higher quality streaming tier for music services has yet to materialize. Recent Reports Spotify announced that lossless audio will be bundled as an add-on to its Premium subscription along with other perks (advanced library management, AI-powered playlists, headphone sound optimization, etc.), and today, during Spotify’s earnings call, the company’s CEO Daniel Ek confirmed that a service beyond Premium is still in the works, but didn’t offer a firm timeline for when it might be available.
In perhaps my favorite tech industry cliché of all time, Ek said the effort is still in its “early stages.” Spotify unveils HiFi for the first time“The plan here is to offer a much better version of Spotify,” Ek says, “that will be about $5 more than our current premium tier, so it’ll probably be in the $17 or $18 price range, but it’ll be like a deluxe version of Spotify, with all the benefits of the regular Spotify version, plus more control, much higher quality in general, and other features that we’re not ready to talk about yet.”
The price is Bloomberg The plan is estimated to cost about $5 extra on top of Spotify’s $11.99 monthly fee. Whatever form Spotify’s lossless audio ultimately takes, it will be very different from what the company originally envisioned. All indications are that Spotify was caught off guard when Apple and Amazon started offering high-resolution audio as part of their standard subscription plans. The music streaming giants always intended to sell it at a premium rate.
Those companies can be more aggressive with pricing because they have plenty of other divisions to make up for losses. Spotify hasn’t been so lucky, so it’s had to rejig its plans and come up with add-on packages that will attract as many of the app’s power users as possible. Finally, the timing seems right.
“We have a significant portion of our 246 million subscribers who want a better version of Spotify,” Ek said. “They’re passionate music fans, and they’re primarily looking for more flexibility in how they use Spotify and the music features it has.”
Bloomberg Spotify is reportedly planning to roll out a “Deluxe” version (Ek’s words) later this year, meaning after all this waiting, we’re only a few months away from finding out everything the add-on plan will include.
