Spotify starts rolling out lossless audio feature

Spotify has announced that it is rolling out the Spotify HiFi lossless audio feature on the platform. The feature is currently available in Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, the US, and the UK for Spotify Premium customers, and will gradually roll out to more than 50 countries through October.

Spotify first announced its plans to launch Spotify HiFi in 2021. This was likely going to be higher priced tier, as that was the standard at the time among competitors like Tidal, Amazon, and Qobuz. Then, Apple came in and announced that it will be offering high-resolution lossless and spatial audio for no extra charge. This caused Spotify to put its plans for lossless on hold, seemingly indefinitely, without really explaining why.

Well, that changes today. Spotify HiFi is finally seeing the light of day and, on top of that, is also being offered at the same price as the current Premium tiers. Users will see an additional quality option in their media quality settings called Lossless that will enable this feature.

Spotify is offering its lossless files in up to 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC, which is a big step up from the 320kbps equivalent Ogg Vorbis files that were previously the highest quality available. However, Spotify’s numbers pale in comparison to the competition, with companies like Apple and Tidal offering 24-bit/192kHz files. Moreover, Spotify is also not offering spatial audio content at the moment unlike its rivals. In case you don’t know what any of that means, you can check out our explainer article here.

There is a feeling of ‘too little, too late’ with this announcement, and it’s possible the company is saving high-resolution and spatial audio content for a higher price tier announcement in the future. Still, just the addition of lossless should be a cause for celebration for anyone with quality audio gear that can appreciate the difference and has been holding out on switching to other services.

The timing for this announcement shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Only a couple of months ago did we see mentions of the feature start appearing buried deep within the Spotify desktop app. Moreover, Apple also recently announced a tool for users of other music streaming services to easily migrate their library over to Apple Music.

It is unfortunate that the company isn’t rolling out this feature to every Premium user right away, with many countries looking at at least a month-long wait for the feature to show up for them. Still, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, a month shouldn’t seem too bad.

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