Spotify Delays Its Lossless HiFi Audio Tier Indefinitely

[Tsing]

Image: Spotify



It could be a while before Spotify subscribers will have the option of enjoying the streaming service’s extensive catalog of albums and podcasts in lossless quality.



This is according to a post by a Spotify moderator, who shared a message on the official forums confirming that its upcoming lossless audio tier, Spotify HiFi, no longer has a clear release date. Spotify announced its premium HiFi tier in February 2021, claiming at the time that it would be available late last year.



“We know that HiFi quality audio is important to you,” reads the post from Yordan. “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.”



“We will of course update you here when we can.”









Spotify HiFi will launch with the following benefits, per the company’s...

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[Brian_B]

Hmm. It’s certainly not a technical issue. Must be licensing wanting more money

 

[Uvilla]

I've yet to be impressed with sound quality from streaming services.
Even when I had a more capable system in my car ( sold the car). I swear a million times... They cut/ modify the source itself, quality settings wouldn't matter. I swear, they cut bass out in songs , I am convinced the modify songs themselves to not be like the original, and more crap earbud friendly... A million kbps wont matter is their source is missing the bass.
Right know the better headphones I got are wyze noise cancelling.. they are pretty decent for the money i think.. guess what, no bass to be found in any song... However, i know my headphones can do some bass, as I looked for bass test songs in YouTube, and magic, I have bass... Obviously, its a headphone, and cheap one too, but I know they are being challenged with the sound of bass, and my head is filled with my precious precious bass I grew up with. Much more than any song I heard on Spotify (though long ago I remember song in Spotify having bass, I had Spotify for a long time but not anymore)
Does anyone know? Do you get bass in like tidal? Do I sound like a nonsensical idiot?

 

[Grimlakin]

I know what you're talking about. I've heard it a few times before. I remember when intergalactic was big and it had a compelling bass track and over the years the delivered version has become less compelling.

 

[xGryfter]

I'm thinking that it has more to do with the cost of deploying something like this right now more than anything. Spotify doesn't really need "Hi-Fi" audio because it has Rogan. Millions of people subscribe to Spotify specifically for Rogan and uses the music service as a byproduct of that so they likely feel the money required to deploy isn't worth it at this point as it's unlikely they'd lose any long time customers to Apple at this point in the game.

 

[Zarathustra]

Whatever. Their high quality streaming encodes are perfectly fine.

Needing lossless encodes is a bunch of golden eared audiophile nonsense.

There isn't a human alive that would correctly pick the lossless vs. the high quality encoded streams in a double blinded study.