Spotify HiFi is coming later this year, which is going to be a new tier in its service that will stream lossless audio. It’s basically going to compete directly with Amazon Music HD, which has been around for a few years already. Amazon Music HD costs $14.99 per month ($12.99 for Prime members).
The announcement came today at its “Stream On” virtual event. According to the company, Spotify HiFi will “deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio format to your device and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers, which means fans will be able to experience more depth and clarity while enjoying their favorite tracks.”
This isn’t the first time that Spotify has talked about high-quality streaming. As it has tested this out in the past. But the feature is now going to roll out more widely, and likely cost more than the regular Premium tier. Which is currently priced at $9.99 per month. Spotify has not said what the price will be for Spotify HiFi, that is also coming soon. But Spotify says that higher-quality streaming has been one of the top requests from its customers for quite some time.
What other lossless streaming services are available?
As mentioned, Amazon Music HD rolled out in 2019, and it costs a few bucks more than the regular Amazon Music service.
TiDAL also has lossless audio – in fact that is their main selling point. And it is priced at $19.99 per month. TiDAL does streaming at 96kHz / 24-bit audio.
There are also other smaller services out there, that have been available for audiophiles, like Qobuz. But with Spotify adding it, it’ll likely make lossless audio a bit more mainstream. And it may even force Apple and Google to also add it to their streaming music services in the future. And that will definitely make lossless audio mainstream, at a pretty decent price too.