WHERE IS HIFI???

[johntinkham]

Anyone else getting ready to leave Spotify for one of the many other options that offer lossless streaming (Apple, Amazon, etc.)? The fact that this was announced in Feb'21 and the Company has gone completely silent on it is a joke. At least give us an update

[DavidSJ]

Completely agree!

Our entire friend group will be leaving Spotify starting 2023 for exactly this reason.

The wait has just been too long (without any updates)..

[gonzalolopezmon]

I agree too!

Come on Spotify!

[Zirconn]

Already left for exactly this reason a few months ago.

They are sending some 3 month offer at a very good price so I decided to check back if they added some kind of lossless. Found this topic, the answer is no, so no Spotify for me 🤣

[hubi_mf]

I agree. The cup of bitterness overflowed. For this reason, after many years on Spotify, I moved my whole family to Tidal in early 2022, we now have music videos and concerts there for the same price, not to mention better sound quality. Maybe if Spotify introduced Hi-Fi at the same price as it is now, the platform would become attractive again. It is true that Tidal has more high-quality content, but Spotify connects better between devices, have good podcast build in and being more social, and this could be a reason to be back on Spotify if they put in the effort.

[pieterv1]

I'm currently doing a combination Spotify + local music stored on my NAS (with Plexamp) for my Hi-Resolution needs... 
I'm tempted to switch to Tidal or Amazon music altogether and I probably would already have if I wasn't sharing a family plan with 5 others. Then got a Car Thing this summer, so I'm fully committed... Please Spotify, bring us Hi-Fi! Sincerely, a 10 year user.

[stadi1]

For this reason, I'm currently trialing Qobuz. I dislike the interface, it has zero discovery, the Android Auto version is even worse than Spotify's (which sucks, but Qobuz's doesn't even remember where I left off, and has no recently played), but the sound quality is great (some things are unfortunately missing that is available on Spotify). I heard bad things about Tidal's quality, so I'm skipping that. I might check out Deezer as well, and then I'll decide where to switch to.

[ABakes]

Spotify obviously doesn't care about the music listening community. They are still to busy trying to push subpar podcasts, and charge people an arm and a leg for audiobooks. Especially cause spotify pays their artists virtually nothing per stream.

Then there is TIDAL. I tried it earlier in the year and I was impressed. Their library is growing, and I had no problems with the mobile app unlike spotify. Which won't even let you download music to an SD card for offline playback, because after the phone restarts it will migrate your playlists to your internal storage. And I can confirm that TIDAL pays their artists more than spotify(I have a distrokid account), and noticed I get pied more from tidal plays than spotify plays. 

So what is spotify doing with all the money they are robbing from artists? Surely not putting it in to development in to a better listening experience. Even the UI is starting to feel dated. 

It's not surprising that Spotify stocks have dropped below their 2018 high.

[erickMA08]

spotify va a seguir igual mientras vea números positivos a ellos no les importa si te gusta o no, cuando fue la última vez que mejoraron su audio o mejoraron su diseño de app su ultimas actualizaciones han sido muy malas. Deberías darle una oportunidad a otro servicio.

[vaajy]

My honest opinion about Hifi. If you need it right now, you know what to do.

I, on the other hand, extremely happy with HQ. Yes, people do laugh at me, but my phone internet is 0.5 Mbps only and my home internet is 10 Mbps only. There is no way I could stream Hifi at these speeds surfing as well. But these are cheap or free speeds provided by landlord or prepaid provider. I honestly even when tried didn't notice better sound - only more data. Perhaps it's not for every1, up to 99% of customers.

Maybe I don't have that quality devices, but I am happy as it is 🙂

[tchrom]

For this reason only, I am seriously considering closing my account (Premium Family) and switching to TIDAL.

[milpai]

I wonder if they can keep the 320kbps option and also offer HiFi. I am willing to pay $19.99 for that. Seems like a licensing issue because as per the insiders, Spotify already has the setups in place and it is just a matter of switching, if the license issue is resolved. This is per the Stereophile article from this month. The biggest concern might be that if Spotify goes HiFi, that might literally kill Tidal and Qobuz.

Anyone also notice, Tidal has HiFi, but no desktop Connect. Their Connect works for certain devices, but not a desktop machine. I feel there might be a genuine licensing issue. Spotify HiFi and Tidal Connect for desktop might be available once this issue is resolved. Thinking that record industry might be worried about HiFi files available on desktop PCs where can lead to piracy? I may be completely wrong.

[SEGSEG]

"Licensing issue" could mean Spotify has determined they can't offer HiFi at a competitive price and they've calculated that the user-attrition/stock-price-hit resulting from having no HiFi tier may be preferable to the user-attrition/sock-price-hit resulting from, e.g., a $25 HiFi tier. Better to string the users along with an empty promise than to tell them hope is dead.

[Richhowth]

I am getting really tired of waiting for the much promised Spotify HiFi. Unless there is some firm launch information soon, I'll be moving to Tidal.