Option to stream in Lossless quality while keeping lower download quality

[Viggohendriks]

Dear Spotify team,

I really enjoy using Spotify, but I’ve run into a frustrating limitation with the quality settings.

At the moment, I can set download quality and streaming quality separately, but once a track is downloaded, Spotify will always play the downloaded version — regardless of the streaming quality I’ve selected.

This means that if I download my music in High Quality (to save storage space), I can no longer listen to that track in Lossless over Wi-Fi — even though that’s exactly what I’d like to do.

It would be a huge improvement if Spotify allowed:

• downloads to remain at a lower quality, but
• automatically stream the lossless version when on Wi-Fi.

This way, I could save space on my device while still enjoying the full lossless experience whenever possible.

I hope you will consider adding this feature in a future update, as it would significantly improve the listening experience.

[keen222]

I wish it would be possible to download music at low quality and play it at low quality only when I'm outside without WiFi, and then use lossless or other high-quality audio at home or other WiFi-enabled locations.

It's so disappointing that with the current specifications, I can only stream music at the downloaded quality. Because I have little storage space left on my smartphone, I download at low quality, which results in low quality audio when streaming, which is really **bleep**.

Please improve this.

When streaming, I'd like a setting that prioritizes lossless or other audio quality instead of just playing the downloaded version.

This is making me wonder whether I should switch to Apple Music.

[tofo29]

• I would also be happy if this would be implemented

[mxtt606]

I have just got access to lossless and noticed this too. It would be amazing to have this feature.

[juneeor]

At the moment, if I have downloaded a list of songs from a playlist in 'Very High' quality, but I have also selected 'Lossless' quality when connected via Wi-Fi, Spotify will play these downloaded songs with Very High quality (instead of Lossless) when I'm connected via Wi-Fi. 

Suggestion to (maybe add an option) allow the corresponding selected quality to play when online, and only play the Downloaded quality when offline.

Downloading Lossless will increase storage capacity use.

[XMARX]

Yes, this is ecactly my wish as well

[dburt218]

Definitely. 

[PinoyzIIMen]

Probably an oversight. Most people wouldn't want to download in Lossless because of the massive file size per song. So there should either be a feature to prioritize Lossless streaming or to at least manually override a song to play as Lossless.

[tunedIN]

Hi keen222

A setting that's not easy to find

Settings>Apps and Devices>Other devices then turn off  'Local audio files'

Please let me know if this solves your issue by clicking 'Accept as solution'. In my testing, turning off this setting doesn't interfere with downloaded tracks when using 'Offline mode'

[YungYuppie]

This is a necessity with the addition of lossless streaming. The files are simply too large to download by the hundreds on a mobile device, but most people have the capability to stream lossless via data or wifi. Having the ability to stream at a higher quality than what is downloaded seems like common sense and is baffling why it is not the default. 

[Daniel2222]

Yesss! I also stumbled upon this and it honestly just keeps making me angry on a daily basis. Should be easy to implement and seems like the only reasonable user experience. If it stays like this on the long run I will definitely be tempted to switch to either Tidal or Apple Music.