Even if most people can’t tell the difference between lossless and high-bitrate compressed music, it indicated Spotify was paying more attention to sound quality.

“We know that HiFi quality audio is important to you.

If you ask me, there’s at least one likely explanation: Spotify was caught off-guard by Apple and Amazon both announcing lossless music at no additional cost in May, and had to scramble to rethink its hifi strategy.

When Spotify announced its HiFi tier, it seemed all but certain it would come with a higher price tag than its Premium tier.

”Beginning later this year, Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi and listen to their favorite songs the way artists intended.” The company also promised the music would be available in CD-quality, which typically means 16-bit resolution with a 44.1kHz sample rate.

But then Amazon and Apple both announced they would offer high-resolution lossless music, going all the way up to 24-bit/192kHz, for the same $9.99 of lossy Spotify Premium ($7.99 for Amazon Prime subscribers)

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Spotify had learned of Apple and/or Amazon’s plans to some degree shortly before announcing HiFi, and that’s why it revealed so few details in the first place

But here’s the thing: even if Spotify did plan to make HiFi a free upgrade, it would have been a comparatively weak deal; Spotify only promised audio up to 16-bit/44.1 kHz, not the high-res 24-bit/192 kHz tracks of its competitors

When done right, spatial audio can have a much more palpable positive impact than lossless ever could

But Spotify has never mentioned plans for spatial audio alongside Spotify HiFi

While before we were only promised an upgrade to CD-quality audio, I would now be really surprised if Spotify HiFi’s eventual launch didn’t include high-res tracks up to 24-bit/192kHz and some form of spatial audio as well