At its Spotify Stream On live event today, the music streaming company announced that it will be launching Spotify HiFi, a new option for its premium subscribers that will give them access to high-quality, lossless music streams. , later this year.
Spotify describes the audio as “lossless CD quality,” which is a big step up from the company’s current lossy 320 kbps streaming quality. He said that streaming high-quality music is still one of the new features most requested by its users.
Spotify has yet to reveal when the new HiFi tier will launch or what it will cost, saying only that “premium subscribers in certain markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi and listen to their favorite songs like the artists. ‘have planned. “
Several other music streaming services like Tidal and Amazon Music have offered lossless quality audio for years, with prices that are about double what you would pay for the standard service. With Spotify’s massive reach and number of subscribers, its HiFi service could be the movement that finally pushes other players like Apple Music and YouTube Music into the lossless CD-quality space – which is what they’ve got up to. now resisted.
Spotify introduced the new service with a video from Billie Eilish and Finneas, in which the two discuss the importance of having a high-quality sound system when listening to the tracks the duo created in the studio.
“High quality sound means more information,” Billie Eilish says in the video. “There are things you won’t hear if you don’t have a good sound system.”
Allowing people to stream high-quality sound is one thing, but if your speakers aren’t set up to receive that enhanced stream, you won’t hear much of a difference. So Spotify says it is working with “some of the biggest speaker manufacturers in the world” to make sure Spotify HiFi works seamlessly when using Spotify Connect.
It should be noted that CD quality lossless streaming levels such as Spotify HiFi, Tidal HiFi, and Amazon Music HD are best when listening over Wi-Fi on a high quality wireless speaker. Bluetooth connections – even those that use better codecs like aptX – are still considered lossy and will add additional compression to those streams before you hear them on your wireless headphones or true wireless headphones.
We should also point out that while the lossless CD quality is much better than conventional music streams, it is not considered high resolution sound, which is generally classified as being of better quality than CD.
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