Spotify could finally get lossless audio — but not how you expect
It’s been over three years since Spotify HiFi — a premium tier with lossless audio — was announced. It was due to arrive before 2021 was out, but years later, it’s still not here, and in 2024 rivals like Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music and Tidal all offer lossless audio as a matter of course.
The last we heard, Spotify’s offering was going to be offered as part of the awkwardly named $20-per-month Supremium package, bundled alongside playlist mixing, audiobook listening and enhanced Last.fm-style stats.
But it looks like Spotify may have changed course once again. As spotted by The Verge, the Reddit user Hypixely — who previously uncovered Supremium — found references to something called Music Pro in the app’s code. You can see a screenshot of said code here featuring the hard-to-misinterpret phrase “lossless has arrived”.
“Unless Spotify is playing with us, there is not going to be a Supremium plan anymore,” Hypixely writes. Instead, we’ll be getting Music Pro, which will apparently be an optional add-on to existing plans, rather than a tier in its own right.
While Hypixely has gleaned no information about price from the code dive, the Redditor does have some insights into what else the Music Pro add-on might offer. It will apparently include “advanced mixing tools”, the ability to filter your library by mood/activity/genre and headphone optimization (including for AirPods).
“I can't confirm if AI Playlists are going to be part of it, but they are coming too,” the Redditor added.
Why not a tier?
Recently, Spotify dropped hints that it was changing its strategy. “We are going to do it, but we’re going to do it in a way where it makes sense for us and for our listeners,” Spotify co-president Gustav Söderström said of HiFi in a recent interview. “The industry changed and we had to adapt.”
So what advantage does it being an add-on make? Well, it certainly offers more flexibility. In Family or Duo, for example, Spotify could offer it to each member individually, possibly with personalized pricing. They could even offer it to those on the ad-supported free tier as a way of getting some money out of them.
Psychologically, it might be more appealing too: users may resist signing up for a whole new tier but welcome a pop-up asking if they want extra features for a few bucks more (it works with fast-food restaurants asking if you want to “go large” after all!)
While we don’t know the final price, the originally mooted $ 20-per-month sub simply won’t cut it anymore. Both Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited include lossless playback in the price of a standard subscription, and just this week Tidal reduced the price of its hi-res music sub to price match Spotify’s standard $10.99 Premium fee.
Hopefully, the appearance of the lines in the code means we’ll find out Spotify’s plans very soon indeed.
