Spotify Reportedly Readying a Lossless Streaming Tier at a Higher Price

Spotify HiFi, the company’s lossless audio streaming tier, will reportedly be launched by the streaming service soon. The company initially revealed its lossless streaming audio tier over two years ago, but is yet to make an official announcement regarding its release date. The new lossless tier will compete with streaming services like Apple Music and Amazon Music, that also offer support for streaming lossless audio. However, users will reportedly have to pay a costlier subscription fee to access the lossless audio streaming feature.

According to a Bloomberg report citing people aware of the developments, Spotify will launch the new HiFi feature that was first announced in 2021, in markets outside the US later this year. The new tier, called “Supremium” internally, will reportedly cost more than the existing Premium plan that offers high-quality audio streaming — but not lossless audio — alongside a free music streaming tier that is supported by advertisements.

The new lossless audio streaming tier will either offer access to a few audiobook titles that can be streamed in a month — Premium subscribers still have to purchase these on Spotify — or give users access to a limited number of listening hours, as per the report, which states that this will be available in the US in October after it arrives in other markets.  

It is worth noting that Spotify currently costs Rs. 119 for a monthly subscription in India (or Rs. 129 for the pre-paid one-time payment option), while rival service Apple Music offers users access to high quality, lossless, and Hi-Res lossless audio streaming for a monthly subscription fee of Rs. 99. Meanwhile, in the US, both Apple Music and Amazon Music are priced at $10.99 (roughly Rs. 900), while Spotify Premium costs $9.99 (roughly Rs. 820) a month.

Earlier this month Spotify began testing a new offline playlist that will save recently played songs for listening when a subscriber’s phone doesn’t have an internet connection. Dubbed “Your Offline Mix”, the automated playlist will be populated with a user’s favourite recently played music tracks, while they can still download individual playlists to listen to on the go.

Google’s YouTube Music also offers a similar “Offline Mixtape” feature that downloads up to 500 songs that can be listened to without an internet connection. Like all features in development and beta testing, there’s no word from Spotify on when the feature will roll out to all users.