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[All Platforms][Music] HiFi Quality - Lossless Streaming 16bit 44.1khz

I've just started a trial of Qobuz - they offer the standard 320kbps as well as lossless FLAC streaming (and high res downloads if you purchase them) the sound quality is noticeably better and on classical it's just wonderful to get all that resolution through your hi-fi or headphones! The catalogue has a way to go to get to Spotify's level, but they are getting there. The iPad app isn't' too bad (the desktop app is in need of an upgrade but I hear they are putting all their efforts into mobile apps right now).
 
So - lossless streaming - if Qobuz can do it then so can Spotify, they must have the same source - and obviously if you are asking £20 a month then those record labels and distributors take enough notice to make the high res tracks available for streaming. What this all means is soon, very soon, we will get lossless streaming and closely followed by high res downloads - but if Spotify aren't careful it will be Apple who get there first with an audiophile premium offering, and when they do it will be a much harder market place to make money in!

Updated on 2022-01-07

Hey folks,

 

We know that HiFi quality audio is important to you. We feel the same, and we’re excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users in the future. But we don’t have timing details to share yet.

 

We will of course update you here when we can.

 

Take care.

Comments
LawLee

Wow did you notice how the originator of this post topic nailed it. timiambeing said on ‎2014-03-02:

 

"but if Spotify aren't careful it will be Apple who get there first with an audiophile premium offering, and when they do it will be a much harder market place to make money in!"

 

unfortunately it's not just Apple it's everybody who got into the audiophile marketplace except for Spotify.

 

timiambeing last posted in 2015. It seems he moved on to Tidal or something else. It's sad to think that Spotify has been dragging their feet on this for close to 8 years??? I for one feel like timiambeing. Life is too short not to fully enjoy your music. Spotify has the capability but not the will to do it.

 

Both with my wired headphones and home theater systems I hear a substantial improvement with CD quality or above. I think CD quality is the sweet spot. I don't believe most can on headphones hear the difference between CD and hi-rez music. However even on a low to mid fi home theater system you can hear improvement at every step between 44.1kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz. After auditioning the music on my monitoring system in my office, which sits on my desk I have become a true believer in CD to hi-rez music.

 

20210630_214549.jpg

 

When COVID hit, I built a workstation for mastering video and audio. I've decided to retire my weak Logitech 5.1 computer speaker system. For a little more than Logitech's top line Z906 (at the time about $400.00 in my region) I was able to assemble a 5.1 AV reciever and speakers. It features a ELAC Cinema 5.1 Speaker System. Theres a 8" ported inch subwoofer under my desk. The five speaker setup symmetrically surrounds my noggin. It's all powered by a Yamaha Aventage RX-A780 receiver.

 

With Spotify I was contemplating replacing these ELAC speakers with Prime satellites and subwoofer from SVS. Not a cheap upgrade for my desk workstation. Since Spotify was delaying release of Hifi I decided to debut Qobuz, something that some of my snobbish audiophile friends recommended. I was blown away with the difference in treble brightness, imaging and also low end punch. 

 

I didn't need a new set up I needed a different streaming service. Right now I am paying for Amazon Unlimited and Qobuz. So I'm paying close to $23 a month to have all the features I want. Think about that Spotify. That means probably I'd happily be willing to pay $14.99-19.99 to your service for the pleasure of Hifi.

 

Right now you got nothing that can feed my systems. So I can't feed your money machine. I have relegated Spotify to where I used to have Pandora; cooking music or garden party background music. But honestly I'd rather not even use your free service because that means I'm still subsidizing you. I'd be happy to pay you for value I want but since 12-26 when I cancelled my service I haven't even used the ad based service. First it was out of upset, but now it out of ambivalence. I realize I don't find your features as compelling as CD to Hi-res quality music.

 

I'd love to be motivated to come back, but you really need to step up. Being the only major player who's not offering lossless music is going to hurt you this year. I'm not willing to wait around anymore for you guys to deliver.

Will1831

well the more I read and wait about it, the more it's clear to me that if Spotify quickly became a leader in the audio streaming market (maybe even a disruptor back in the day), they are not even followers or adaptor now. Not in terms of lossless strategy. They didn't (couldn't) deny the need for lossless streaming but clearly they failed keeping the lead on this one. (intentionally i'm sure)

 

An other issue being that, with the bandwidth availability these days and in most countries, lossless will become the new standard sooner rather than later. 

 

It isn't the same about podcasting, on which their strategy seemed to be focused on. Probably not a bad idea, business wise, as this would probably (I imagine) bring many new subscribers mainly looking for this. It's not my thing (although I've listen to many of them on spotify) but i can imagine this could be a key advantage for some of us out there.

 

 

PaulMac

Does anyone else think the way Spotify have (mis)handled this sets a new standard?

 

I mean they are always keen to portray themselves a customer focused company, going as far to name their FB and Twitter support sites as 'SpotifyCares'

'

The reality of course is very different. Anyone who has visited the really big threads over the past few years will have realised very quickly that Spotify don't care at all about what their customers want. Idea after idea (eg. the 10k song limit or bring back lyrics) will run literally for years with absolutely nothing in terms of feedback from Spotify themselves. They simply don't give a monkeys!

 

This time though they've even managed to outdo themselves in terms of dire customer support. For once they issued a statement that specified an actual implementation date. Yes the statement itself was vague but that date was there leaving no doubt that HiFi would be rolling out in at least some regions before the end of 2021. Surely it would just be a matter of time before it was available to everyone?

 

The rest of course is history. No HiFi anywhere and just a single report on Golem.de supposedly from a Spotify spokesperson saying they're still looking forward to offering HiFi in the future but this time there's no date. Will it ever happen? Meanwhile the official thread (this one) is still running with the update from last March saying the upgrade is coming - in 2021!

 

Even by Spotify standards this is complete and utter clusterf**k. At times it almost seems they are intentionally going out of their way to annoy their own customers.

Will1831

I think it's too much of a shortcut to say they don't listen to their customers. Even though you're right but the statement could be mitigated with the support they give on a everyday basis solving incidents and issues, as well as the device support that grows everyday.

 

It's no doubt they will implement hires streaming. Question is when ?

 

From a customer perspective : many offer are available with a reasonable price tag, switch is easy.

From a company perspective : the later the implementation the more customers they might loose. How many ? Short term impact i guess around 25423 (which is the number of votes of the idea), mid term impact : anything between 25423 and milions due to lossless streaming becoming standard.

 

Having tested Tidal and Qobuz, i must say for a fact that quality is no doubt better BUT none have the easy accessibility of Spotify Connect ! So anyone not caring about hires quality might stick to Spotify for that.

Vitezslavfiala

Good day, I understand your discussion, but we need help !!! Spotify coughs at our interests !!! We only want one single and that working button dislike across the entire application. The dislay button doesn't work and the moderators pushed our thread to the sidelines.

Please help and click on us in our thread: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-quot-Don-t-Like-Button-quot-should-be-adde...

 

Thank you very much !!!

decooney

Various reports about more talk vs. action from Spotify.  

 

As they say "Talk is Cheap".   

 

https://world-today-news.com/spotify-hifi-the-music-streaming-giant-postpones-the-feature/

 

GBillett

Its official - Spotify have postponed the introduction of HiFi until 'the future',  though remains unspecific about a date.  At least consumers who want lossless music can now make decisions,  there are a number of very good alternatives. eg Apple, Amazon, Qobuz, Deezer.  

 

I hope Spotify learn from this debacle and in future treat their users with more transparency and respect.

 

'It is finally the German site Golem who announced that “The launch of Spotify HiFi has been postponed indefinitely”. The site did have a response from Spotify about the arrival of this formula:

“Artists and fans have told us that Spotify HiFi is important to them. We agree and look forward to bringing the Spotify HiFi experience to our premium users in the future, but we cannot provide further details yet ”.  '

 

https://world-today-news.com/spotify-hifi-the-music-streaming-giant-postpones-the-feature/

 

 

LawLee

You guys ever heard of the acronym FUD. The letters stand for fear uncertainty and doubt. In marketing it's used as a technique. When competitors have capability that puts at risk a company, at times the organization may leak or promote a upcoming new product that is competitive with their competition. Fear uncertainty and doubt can cause a certain sector of customers to stay with a company that has an inferior product out of the worry that investment in something else maybe wasted.

 

I'm sure there are people who are staying in Spotify, as I was out of FUD. Ever hoping Hifi would come, I kept paying my monthly $9.95. I realized I spent the better part of a year in expectation of something, When there was no need to. I have a sizable music collection in CD's. I absolutely abhor the quality of modern recordings, mostly pop which have very little dynamic range or subtle instrumentality. I started a project of ripping a few CDs to lossless flac at comparing them to Spotify premium and the other services.

 

I'll tell you something I noticed. From my critical listening even the best lossless services come close but don't sound as good as a locally created lossless flac rips. Qobuz comes the closest. I decided to go ahead and rip my entire collection in flac which only took a couple of days. Still struggling with whether to keep Amazon Unlimited or Qobuz, or both. But with this news story Spotify has made its position clear. Anybody that's hanging on waiting for Hifi from Spotify don’t let FUD keep you stuck. There's a whole world of wonderful services out there to help you experience music at a higher level. Since there's no long term commitment it's easy to come back when they get their act together. Best wishes Spotify. I hope you get it together.

GBillett

I am angry too - I waited 9 months on a false promise.  Though to believe that Spotify never meant to introduce HiFi is,  I feel, unbelievable.  My reading is that Apple and Amazon 's dramatic price reduction on lossless music blew Spotify's commercial plan out of the water.  That,  and their pre-occupation with diluting their main product/diversifying ( podcasts,  investment in war technology etc ),  have made introducing HiFi currently commercially unacceptable.  To believe Spotify deliberately lied  to its paying customers to introduce fud is ascribing a level of contempt that Spotify does not deserve.  But I may be wrong 🙂

 

I chose Qobuz and enjoy the music-centric service it provides.  Otherwise Apple and Amazon are great alternatives.

 

LawLee

GBillett I can't say that Spotify deliberately lied to us. That they trotted out all this slick copy and videos may indicate that they thought they were going to be able to capitalize on that functionality. After all Amazon, Tidal and Qobuz charged a premium for lossless content. I think the fact that Amazon and Apple are giving lossless away for their standard price may have knocked Spotify back on their heels. So all their great talk about how important it is to get it out for artists and listeners got trumped by their financial interests.

 

But FUD something that my company in the Silicon Valley employs. It's not contemptible for companies to do it. It's a way to hold on to customers. It's not lying on Spotify's part. The FUD proposition was on my part. I hung on hoping they'd deliver. What I realize is there's no value hanging on. I don't lose a thing by leaving. And I'm not going to attribute benevolence to accompany who's principally interested in profits. I have said in my post get there with that I’d be willing to pay a premium for CD quality. Clearly not willing or able to bring it to market at this time. It may be a technical issue like with Spotify connect that won't let them be competitive. Who's to say? They're not talking.

 

I didn't call Spotify evil. They are neither good nor evil. There are a company. They make business decisions amorally. Go back and look at my posts and you'll see that have always pulled for them. Don't think for a moment that they're not going to do what's in their best financial interest. There’s only 26,000 of their millions of customers requested Hifi as a feature. I’m not in my peer group. I’m not their target audience. Perhaps their focus on podcasts, audio books, buying concert tickets keeps their loyal fanbase happy. I am interested in none of those things. When all of these things are tacked onto the Spotify app I can imagine the app looking more cluttered and confusing.

 

Like you other services offer the features I want. And as a consumer I need to do the same thing, vote with my dollars. I’m not mad at the company. What purpose would that serve? It's simply that for the way I listen to music Spotify no longer makes sense. For now...