Spotify may charge extra for HiFi ‘lossless’ audio streaming

For many years, Spotify has offered a higher bit-rate option to premium subscribers, but it has not caught up to other streamers offering ‘lossless' audio streaming. That should change soon with Spotify HiFi, but it may mean paying extra.

According to Bloomberg, Spotify is now planning a new, more expensive subscription tier, codenamed “Supremium” internally. It is expected that this tier will launch alongside Spotify HiFi, which was announced two years ago but has yet to actually launch.

While Apple and Amazon offer lossless audio streaming as part of their standard subscription, other services like Tidal do charge extra. It would seem that Spotify is leaning towards Tidal's way of doing things, offering a more expensive subscription to offer the best quality stream settings.

Interestingly, Amazon and Apple's decisions to offer lossless audio as a free upgrade to existing subscribers may have led to the delay in Spotify HiFi's launch. As reported by The Verge, Spotify co-president, Gustav Söderström, noted back in March that “the industry changed for a bunch of reasons” shortly after Spotify HiFi was announced and as a result, the company “had to adapt”.

Currently, a Spotify Premium subscription costs $9.99 per month in the US, a price that has not changed since launch. Spotify HiFi could end up pushing the price up to $14.99 per month or perhaps even $19.99 per month to help offset bandwidth and storage costs for lossless music.

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KitGuru Says: For the majority of people Spotify's current Premium offering is perfectly fine. However, there are plenty of audiophiles and industry folk with access to more expensive headphones and speaker setups that would appreciate the upgrade to lossless streaming.

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