Spotify's HiFi tier is coming — but not soon

A report suggests the Apple Music lossless launch spoiled Spotify's HiFi plans, but a Spotify executive has confirmed the new tier is still coming eventually.

Spotify announced that a lossless tier called Spotify HiFi would be released in 2021. Two years later, an exec says the HiFi tier is definitely coming, but no word yet on when.

According to a report from The Verge, Spotify has had a HiFi tier available for over a year with employees able to access it. However, plans changed when Apple Music and Amazon revealed lossless music at no additional cost.

The report was generated based on an interview with Spotify co-president Gustav Soderstrom conducted by Decoder and additional information obtained by The Verge. The interview touched on the HiFi tier briefly, but no release dates or other information was provided.

"We announced it, but then the industry changed for a bunch of reasons," Soderstrom told Decoder. "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. The industry changed and we had to adapt."

The interviewer pressed for more details as to why the tier was delayed, but Soderstrom wouldn't specifically mention competitors or deals with labels. The report generated after states Apple Music's lossless introduction at no additional cost spoiled Spotify's plans — though Soderstrom did not say so directly.

Allegedly, Spotify had hoped to offer lossless music at a higher paid tier and may still. This tier would be a revenue driver and could offer even more functionality, like spatial audio.

The interview covered by the report was focused on Spotify's pivot into its TikTok-like format. There was no mention of a Spotify HiFi release date or of any intention to include spatial audio or other formats.

20 Comments

AppleZulu 2174 comments · 8 Years

About 1 year ago

It seems the time is ending when a content provider can charge extra just for resolution and quality to match device capabilities. Spotify was just following suit with Amazon, Tidal, etc., and missed the boat when Apple added lossless and spatial audio at no extra charge.

Particularly with spatial audio, Apple’s decision was transformative. The old way of charging extra for “premium quality” actually stifled the business. Tidal made Dolby Atmos available more than a year before Apple, but charged a premium. At that point, because a much smaller group of people were willing to pay extra for it, not a lot of new content was being created in the format, which in turn limited the number of people who would pay extra to access such a limited catalog. It’s a dumb way to do business. So Apple flipped a switch and millions of people already had compatible playback gear in their pockets, and a music subscription that included access to the format. Now scads of Atmos content is available, with more coming every week.

So for Spotify, the content is available, but their plans of increasing prices to access it vanished.

Likewise, Netflix is struggling ostensibly with password sharing, but that may not be their real problem. Netflix charges a premium for 4K HDR video quality, while everyone else includes that in their regular pricing - because most new TVs are now sold with the capability.

To deflect the sting of the extra charge for a what has become a standard feature, Netflix bundles that with their tier that allows up to four simultaneous streams. Most of the people sharing their passwords are subscribed to this tier, and a nonzero number of those subscribers are there for the 4K. The irritation of paying more is blunted by the fact they can share the subscription with their mother-in-law. When Netflix cracks down on password sharing, these are the folks who will object the loudest, because they’ll be pissed about what was really the case all along: Netflix is charging extra for what is in reality a standard feature, and the time is waning for this to be an acceptable business practice.

melgross 33607 comments · 20 Years

About 1 year ago

Spotify continues to generate losses. I’ve been saying for several years that the only companies that will be able to offer music streaming on a large scale will be companies that offer it as a service, as additive to their other, much larger businesses. So Amazon, Apple, Google and possibly Microsoft, if they ever get their act together, will be able to do this. Possibly Meta and a couple of others. So far, over the more than two decades that streaming has been around, almost every separate company doing it has failed. Tidal is in an amorphous state, having major problems. Pandora, the same. Tiny services such as QoBuz are barely hanging in.

spotify already offers some of the lowest payments per stream. So sure, they would want to raise their monthly fees. If the licensees require higher stream payments, they would have to. There’s no money for it otherwise. Despite having Ads for the majority of their now 500 million subscribers, they just can’t seem to “stream” a profit. How much longer will this continue?

melgross 33607 comments · 20 Years

About 1 year ago

Dooofus said:

AppleZulu said:

Netflix is charging extra for what is in reality a standard feature, and the time is waning for this to be an acceptable business practice.

If Netflix charges extra for 4K and people pay for it by choice, of their own free will, how is that not an "acceptable business practice"?

He didn’t say it isn’t now, but that it won’t be in the future. He’s right. If everyone else offers 4k for no extra payment, Netflix will have to follow. It’s why Spotify isn’t yet offering uncompressed audio. They can’t afford to at the current subscription price, and likely can’t sell it at a higher price now that Apple and Amazon aren’t.

applebynature 119 comments · 9 Years

About 1 year ago

melgross said:
spotify already offers some of the lowest payments per stream.

And Spotify wants to go even LOWER on payments to artists. News from yesterday outlines their plan to offer artists higher exposure to customers by tweaking their algorithm to show and play participating artists more often and more prominently, in exchange for those artists agreeing to a lower per stream payment plan than other artists. It sounds very similar to the "influencers" who beg businesses to give them their product for free and in exchange they'll "promote" the product. I really don't like it.

spheric 2702 comments · 9 Years

About 1 year ago

melgross said:

Spotify continues to generate losses. I’ve been saying for several years that the only companies that will be able to offer music streaming on a large scale will be companies that offer it as a service, as additive to their other, much larger businesses.

This would be the final nail in the commoditisation of music.

In which bizarre universe is the logical business choice simply accepting that there is no way to make any money off streaming business model, and in consequence reducing it to a loss-leading add-on? I mean, rather than figuring that THE FUCKING BUSINESS MODEL DOESN'T WORK?

I'm slightly irate over this because at NO POINT in this (mis)judgement of business viability do the interests of those supplying the actual content ever enter into the equation.

Oh, so you've built a "business" around ripping us off and giving everything we make away, conditioned customers to expect access to everything for free or ad-free for price of three Starbucks coffees a month, and haven't figured out how to make a profit?

Well, now. I have this D-sub tie-line cable that would like a word with you.