Spotify please give update on Spotify Hi-Fi

[x187lockdown]

Dear Spotify,

As someone who cares about the quality of the music they listen to, and spends a decent amount of money on a worthy setup, it's important to me to have a lossless source. Until I purchased a system worthy enough of Hi-Fi quality music, I was using Spotify for many years and sound quality was satisfactory for the hardware I was running and the user experience was second to none. 

Step into 2018 where Hi-Fi quality audio is becoming more and more important to many people, who spend £££'s on DAC's and high end headphones and ££££'s on high-end home audio equipment. With streaming just being the most convenient way to listen to music, here is what us audiophiles have as options:

1) A CD player with hundreds of CD's

2) A NAS device with loads of ripped CD's

3) Record player with everything on vinyl

4) A high resolution streaming service such as Tidal, Deezer or Qobuz.

1) and 2) are just not convenient enough options anymore. 3) will always have a place in the lives of many audiophiles but is not ideal for casual listening. So we are left with 4). I opted for Tidal out the streaming services which sits behind Roon so I can control my whole setup remotely from my iPad, whilst still maintaining a lossless source. This is incredibly painful, Tidal's algorithms for finding related music is not a touch on yours, and it's very bias towards the hip-hop. Roon has a great wireless protocol for lossless transmission which really needs to be heard to be believed but it's interface sits on top of Tidals and is not the nicest user experience to find music. Tidal has 3.5million subscribers, 45% of which are subscribed to the Hi-Fi service. Plus everyone subscribed to Deezer and Qobuz and that's a hefty market share you could quite literally grab overnight if you released a Hi-Fi service. You could charge £20 per month for this premium service just as Tidal does and you would receive millions of new (and rejoining) subscribers in a matter of days.

For the sake of the audiophile community who desperately want this, can you please provide an update to the following questions:

1) Is Spotify Hi-Fi something that's going to happen?

2) If so, roughly what timelines are we looking at?

3) What technical challenges are preventing or delaying this from happening?

4) Is there a beta some users can sign up to? Or are people just adding their names to another thread in vein?

I would, along with all others who care about the quality of their music and want Spotify back in their lives, appreciate answers to the above. 

Thanks

ps. I actually re-joined Spotify whilst travelling a few months ago and it made me realise how much I missed the interface, playlists, recommendations and generally feeling connected to the world of music.

[Maxim]

Hey @x187lockdown,

Right now, Spotify doesn't support Lossless streaming and they usually don't announce any new features in advance. Add your comments and votes to this idea to show your support for Lossless quality:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Lossless-Streaming-16bit-44-1khz-CD-quality/idi-p/700...

[x187lockdown]

My votes been added. Anyone else who lands on this thread, please do the same so we can force the mighty hand of Spotify to implement this.

[46michael08]

We can always hope but since this request come up 2013 nothing has happened.

Hope there soon will be a new player that can match Spotify with loss less quality.

With current owners Loss Less will never happen as they dont have that quality mindset.

[Zenister]

Hey, all the best and lots of love from Sweden.... Any chance to be chosen for beta-test :0)?

[bbjmm]

I notice a difference in volume between TIDAL and Spotify, on the contrary, I see it with my sound card meters. Tidal sounds louder. Why is the volume different?

[gleisonanunes]

Também espero anciosamente a versão HI Fi, existe posssibilidade de ser escolhido para um teste!!!???

[Henry172]

Hey Spotify get to it now!

We're in the 21st Century and 16bit 44khz sound has been around since the early 80's! Spotify's increasingly weak "High Quality" product offer is becoming a turn off.

Stop with the pathetic public excuses because behind the scenes you don't have the bit ready music files and you secretly don't want to pay for the upgraded data storage and bandwidth tariffs. 

No more purile excuses and kicking this into the long grass with childish comments like  "hey, thanks for the great idea". How about killing the ridiculous nosense around the weekly app and software updating cycle and concentrainting on the thing that really matters. The quality of the music. Was the IPO a wasted opportunity to raise the funds to do this properly? As each month passes as "high quality" customers we're loosing patience on this subject. 

[user-removed]

Me Too.   This is a huge issue of Spotify for the audiophiles.

Would be really good and extremelly joined if this happen.

[ylmzstc]

Exacly ! Even listening from youtube can be better this is bad spotift do something about quality.

[tsndr]

They did not even reply, this is how much they care about us...

[Terozzz]

Cancelling my sub. This is 2018.... still no hi-fi. Sad.

[darmodude]

I'm doing the same, I paid over 5 grand for my car audio system and still waiting on spotify to release Hi-FI to get the most out of it. I have a family subscription with 5 others, but they are not heave users of the service anyway. Time to move to Tidal, i will return to spotify when and if they release the Hi-Fi.

[Terozzz]

Done, Tidal it is and **bleep** that quality.. grow up Spotify, it is 2018... 

[Terozzz]

Done, Tidal it is and **bleep** that quality.. grow up Spotify, it is 2018... 

[coraze]

i did the same thing and moved to Tidal. 

[hacke11]

I moved to Tidal months ago. Do not regret the sound upgrade. Yeah, finding new music is not as convinient but everything else is great. There is no reason for not switching to Tidal, especially considering that even low quality devices and hardware will play the CD quality music without problems and the sounds gonna be an upgrade.

[CandleOfThought]

Also downgraded to Free account and moved my paid subscription to Tidal. I also miss the better interface and smarter playlists, but sound quality is more important to me. I spent money on dedicated DACs and Tidal makes it worth it. But I would move back if lossless is added.

[buckbuckbuck]

Go to settings -> normalize volume and turn it off. That'll fix it 🙂 Just had the same experience comparing the two. 

[r8rs_dy48129]

I had to switch to Tidal also. Really frustrating as I love so much about Spotify!