Announcements
The Spotify Stars Program: Celebrating Values Week!

Help Wizard

Step 1

NEXT STEP

Spotify please give update on Spotify Hi-Fi

Spotify please give update on Spotify Hi-Fi

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.

Reply
38 Replies

Moved to tidal a few months ago. Not looking back 😎

That’s just the gain settings being different. You can adjust that in the settings of Tidal

 After many years using the service, i am out from spotify because they don't have lossless quality, in while spotify has  320kbps, Tidal pass throught from CD quality, on HI-RES MQA quality streaming. Its sadly, because i like more the spotify style like playlists and recommendations from yours algorithym, and i will back when lossless has implementing on spotify. Thx!

I've used Qobuz Sublime for year now. It is unthinkable to even consider 16/44 streaming service after using 24/192. Please beware, DO NOT TRY IT, you and your wallet will regret it.

I have been using Tidal and agree that music discovery options are very limited. They also have less variety of playlists. I am using soundiiz to transfer good playlists from Spotify to Tidal. Though this is bit of extra work I don't mind for the extra sound quality. For all those who think lossless audio is only for audiophiles I would like to tell you are wrong. I am not much of an audiophile and don't own any expensive equipment or headphones. You will definitely be able to tell the difference even with your normal audio device once you keep listening to only lossless music as your ears will be trained to hear the difference. The drums, strings, vocals sound weak even in 320kbps. Switch to 1411 kbps or above and you will hear the power of original audio.

I'm paying £10 a month for Spotify and £20 for Tidal HiFi, because I want to stay loyal to the OG service. It's only a matter of time before I lose patience and give up on Spotify forever. Once I'm gone I'm not coming back. This is such BS.

Yes. I tried Tidal for a while. Really good quality. But the interface ..... Please Spotify. Give us lossless audio quality. 

I am also looking  for other options. Tidal is looking better and better, if spotify doesn't give answers soon i will also take the 'big' step towards Tidal. 

I have Family Spotify plus Quobuz for hi res. Qobus interface, coverage and search etc is not remotely a patch on Spotify but the sound quality is fabulous. Soundiiz is cool for transferring and linking playlists between the two. This whole set-up costs £40/m which on the whole isn't too bad for the pleasure and reward it gives. Only Soundiiz seems interested in replying to emails.

 

Yeah, I'm currently subscribed to Deezer for the HiFi audio quality but I would jump back to Spotify (used to subscribe to Spotify for a few years before I quit waiting) in a heartbeat if they'd provide HiFi streams. 

Need this!

 such a disappointment spotify.

Its a disgrace now to let friends listen to spotify using high end car audio equipment.
Friends asking what happen to my car audio equipment, spend so much and listen to this kind**bleep**.

 

I pay for Spotify and Tidal. I use Spotify to find music and Tidal to play it. I don’t like Tidal, I actually hate it but I can’t compromise on Music sound quality. If Spotify gave me CD quality streaming for £20 a month I would drop Tidal in a heartbeat.

Similar, would actually consider 25 p/m as cheap considering I now pay 30 for spotify + tidal

Would be willing to pay more. Please make this happen.

I agree with this post.  I have canceled spotify and started Tidal.  

I prefer using Spotify app over Tidal but must have the HiFi streaming of Tidal.

 

GreKon

 Hi! 

Well, I was looking for this question about HiFi audio in streaming services and happens that I found Deezer. I was a Deezer user in the past and changed to Spotify due to the number of artists and music, but now Deezer have almost the same quantity of music (at least I managed import my playlists to Deezer) but the fact is that I would like to stay with Spotify,  but the audio quality of Deezer is really better... Come on, Spotify, fix it!

I absolutely agree with the previous speaker. spotify ABSOLUTELY NOTHING does not make suggestions from users. That was the case with the withdrawal of one of the best Spotify - RUNNING features, so it is also with the hifi / hi-res option. I personally belong to the Spotify subscribers from the very beginning of my presence in Poland and I see that apart from expanding the library, Spotify does absolutely nothing to improve, improve and modernize the platform. Last time I'm slowly switching to TIDAL, although of course I agree that it strongly favors HipHop, but also strongly supports the Polish alternative scene, which does not end with The Dumplings and Dawid Podsiadlo, as happens in playlists in spotify. I can assume that Spotify does not read these opinions too much ... With such a large number of subscriptions, they may have such suggestions ... As the predecessor wrote, spending huge amounts of money on musical equipment in the era of musical streaming, we should expect a bit more , than the enigmatic "best quality", i.e. pathetic 320 KB / s ...

Ladies and gentlemen, with spotify, it's time to start working, not just "cut off coupons" ...

Auditeur Kołodziej

Good news!

 

Spotify has announced that later this year lossless quality is coming and it will be called Spotify HiFi

 

Check out my blog post about it

 

Check out this news article for more information:

Five Things to Know About Spotify HiFi

 

MattSudaSpotify Star
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate my answer, maybe give me a Like.
Note: I'm not a Spotify employee.

Suggested posts