At this point, it’s fair to assume that something went wrong with Spotify HiFi. Two years ago today, during the company’s Stream On event, Spotify announced a new streaming level that would allow customers to enjoy lossless CD-quality audio from the leading subscription music service.
Spotify felt the news was worthy of some star power and shot a promo video for HiFi with Billie Eilish and Finneas. You remain on the company’s YouTube page and can still read blog post saying that the updated sound would arrive “later this year”, meaning in late 2021.
And then it just…didn’t happen. Two years later, Spotify HiFi has yet to launch. The long wait and lack of updates they have become worthy of a meme in this point. It’s a strange saga, frankly: companies like Spotify don’t often announce a feature only to stop talking about it like nothing ever happened. HiFi is routinely not mentioned in Spotify’s quarterly earnings calls, and inquiries about its status with Spotify PR are usually met with radio silence or “nothing new to share.”
So what happened? Unfortunately, there is no clear answer. Spotify has managed to control everything that sent HiFi so far off course. Even well-informed reporters who focus on the company have been unable to pin down what is behind the delay.
The Apple Music Dilemma
At the time Spotify introduced HiFi, lossless music was of great value. It was a paid upgrade. Services like Amazon Music and Tidal charged extra on top of their standard monthly fee to unlock higher fidelity streaming.
But just a few months after the Spotify news, Apple revealed its own plans around lossless music and Dolby Atmos spatial audio tracks: both would be offered to Apple Music customers at no additional cost. Amazon must have picked up on this and stopped charging more for “HD” streaming the same day as Apple’s press release. Other competitors also soon lined up.
If Spotify had conceptualized HiFi as another way to help improve its bottom line, that quickly became impractical. There has been speculation that Apple’s pay-no-extra approach caught the company off guard and derailed whatever HiFi’s original implementation plan was.
But other services have known how to adapt. Optional lossless audio has become the status quo among Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and Deezer. Why not Spotify? (It’s worth mentioning that YouTube Music is also still holding out on lossless.)
Signs of life, but the wait drags on
In the past two years, people have discovered mentions of HiFi, tutorialsand inactive settings for the hidden feature within the Spotify mobile app. From a technical perspective, it looks like things have been ready to go for quite some time and Spotify just needs to flip the switch. There is no such luck.
There have also been surveys raising the idea of new monthly plans that would include HiFi among other benefits at a higher price. It would be a bad image to demand more money just for hi-fi quality when you can get it for free elsewhere, so maybe Spotify will try to justify a more expensive subscription by adding other exclusive perks and advanced library management.
The company hasn’t made any of this official, mind you. Maybe that will happen at the next Stream On in March. Or maybe they won’t say anything at all, and this very strange situation will just continue.
Why does anyone still care about this?
Spotify is hugely popular and is considered by some to be the best music service for playlists and personalized recommendations, and you can’t forget about social media sensations like Spotify Wrapped. But for a company that lives and breathes music, Spotify is taking a long time to improve music. consumption. I’m not here to debate whether the average person can hear the difference between the service “Very high” transmission bit rate and a lossless FLAC or some high resolution track. But for every month we keep waiting for HiFi, Spotify is sacrificing the chance to be the only destination that covers all the bases.
So far, you’re also losing control of spatial audio and Dolby Atmos music. Again, many people will dismiss spatial audio as a gimmick, but having the option it has quickly become the norm for Apple and Amazon customers. Sonos is about to release a speaker designed to showcase the immersive format, and Spotify isn’t even in the fold.
In that video above, Billie Eilish says “we make music that wants to be heard the way it’s made.” Folks, it’s been a stupidly long wait, but I still have a shred of hope that 2023 will be the year Spotify puts something back in the way we listen.
