When will Spotify HiFi arrive? Spotify breaks its silence

Spotify customers are nonetheless ready for the streamer’s promised HiFi tier, which was purported to convey CD-quality music streams to the service final 12 months. Now, after a prolonged silence, Spotify has piped up with a HiFi replace, however the information gained’t be music to your ears.

Responding to customers queries on its group help website, a Spotify moderator stated (as first spotted by 9to5Mac) that the streaming big continues to be “excited” about Spotify HiFi, however that it didn’t have “timing particulars to share.”

Right here’s the full post from the Spotify community site:

We all know that HiFi high quality audio is necessary to you. We really feel the identical, and we’re excited to ship a Spotify HiFi expertise to Premium customers sooner or later. However we don’t have timing particulars to share but. We are going to after all replace you right here after we can.

Reached for remark, a Spotify rep informed TechHive that the corporate did “not have something additional to share on HiFi past the thrill for the longer term launch.”

Spotify first announced Spotify HiFi nearly a year ago, with the streamer promising that it could–ultimately–convey “CD-quality, lossless audio” to subscribers.

On the time, Spotify stated that Spotify HiFi would arrive “this 12 months,” which means someday in 2021. But the service has yet to materialize, and Spotify’s audio streams nonetheless max out at solely 320Kbps within the lossy Ogg Vorbis format.

Within the meantime, different streaming music providers have leapfrogged Spotify so far as audio high quality goes. Apple, which used to ship solely lossy music streams, announced back in May that it would offer lossless audio all the way in which as much as 24-bit/192kHz (which is taken into account high-resolution audio, slightly than “CD-quality” or 16-bit/44.1kHz audio) together with Dolby Atmos-powered spatial audio, all for a similar worth as its customary music streaming tiers.

On the similar time, Amazon introduced that it could drop the premium pricing charges for its lossless, high-resolution, and spatial audio music tracks, basically providing the identical pricing construction as Apple.

In the meantime, hi-fi music streamers that have been charging further for CD-quality and high-resolution audio tracks have been tweaking their pricing tiers. Qobuz, for instance, lowered its Qobuz Studio plan from $15 a month to $13/month, whereas Tidal now presents a less expensive CD-quality tier for $10 a month along with its $20/month high-resolution streaming plan.

Spotify by no means detailed whether or not it could cost further for its promised HiFi service, nor did it focus on whether or not high-resolution or spatial audio streaming can be on the desk.

Up to date shortly after publication with extra feedback from Spotify.