Spotify appears to be preparing to launch a lossless audio version of its music streaming service called Spotify Hi-Fi. The new service tier is currently being tested on a small group of users.
Spotify Hi-Fi was discovered yesterday by some users who shared some screenshots on Twitter and on Reddit threads. The feature isn’t available to everyone yet, and Spotify might simply doing some A/B testing (comparative testing), according to The Verge.
Screenshot showing what Spotify Hi-Fi offers.
Spotify Hi-Fi is being offered for $5 to $10 more than the $10 per month Spotify Premium. One user in particular said that the service was being offered for an extra $7.50 on top of his Premium subscription. Some users who actually tried to sign up for the new subscription tier received an error message signaling that it’s not fully available just yet.
As for what exactly Spotify Hi-Fi offers, it includes all the features from the Premium subscription, pre-sale concert tickets, discounts on vinyls and, most importantly, lossless CD quality audio. For the uninitiated, lossless audio perfectly copies the quality of songs from a CD without compromising the quality, according to TechCrunch.
Spotify Premium currently offers 320kbps audio files for the highest quality. These files are a lot smaller and easier to load, but there’s still degradation in terms of audio quality. Lossless audio files on the other hand is the best quality of audio a user can get, but may be harder to load because average file sizes can be five to ten times bigger than 320kbps audio files.
Lossless audio is really intended for audiophiles as it requires a headphone amp and premium headphones to actually hear the difference in quality. Spotify Hi-Fi may just be the Spotify’s way of taking on Tidal which has been offering lossless audio since the service launched in 2014. This could also convince some Apple Music subscribers to jump ship.