Spotify HiFi, the streaming service’s lossless tier of audio streaming is being pushed back with no concrete timeline for a release in sight. It’s almost a year after it was first announced on 23 February 2021.
If the feature itself is news to you, this is Spotify’s answer to Tidal or Amazon Music’s HD tier. Currently, Spotify’s ‘very high’ quality setting only streams lossy files at a bitrate of 320kbps. Spotify HiFI would increase that to lossless CD-quality, around 1,400kbps. Anyone can see that’s quite the quality jump. A lot of people, us included, were rather excited about it.
This HiFi needs more time in the Spotify oven
Well, it seems we’re all facing an even longer wait now. A post in a thread on Spotify’s community site alludes to it taking longer than initially expected. This is the first bit of communication since the announcement.
“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. We will of course update you here when we can.”
When it was announced last year February, the feature was supposed to be rolling out to “selected markets” during that year. It very well might still do that, only at a later date. When? Who knows. Not even Spotify does. Or if they do, they aren’t saying.
As for the ‘why’ Spotify doesn’t say but it could be because the people in charge have had to rethink the feature and its rollout. Especially after Apple Music and Amazon Music announced they would offer the upgrade to lossless streaming at no extra cost. It wasn’t explicitly stated that Spotify HiFi would cost more but it was described as an ‘upgrade’. Those don’t usually happen for free.
For now, we sit and wait in anticipation. As do Spotify’s main competitors for more news on the ‘upcoming’ feature.
Source: Tom’s Guide