Remember Spotify HiFi? It’s been nearly four years since Spotify first announced that lossless audio streaming was on tap, and here we are, still waiting.
Now there’s another burst of chatter about the long-delayed feature, with Bloomberg reporting that Spotify HiFi is still in the pipeline—for those willing to pay extra.
According to Bloomberg, lossless Spotify streaming will come in a new add-on called Music Pro, which will offer other benefits including AI-powered music remixing tools as well as discounted concert tickets.
And yes, Spotify Music Pro will cost extra—possibly as much as $5.99 on top of your current Spotify Premium subscription, Bloomberg reports. That means individual Spotify Premium subscribers could be paying roughly $18 a month for lossless music streaming privileges.
As it stands, Spotify Premium costs $11.99 a month for individual streamers, while Duo (for two users) costs $16.99 a month and Premium Family goes for $19.99 a month.
Spotify’s Music Pro add-on will land “this year,” Bloomberg says. (Of course, we’ve been hearing that lossless Spotify is coming “this year” for a few years now.)
Most of the other big music streamers already offer lossless as well as high-resolution audio tracks, which come included with their standard streaming plans.
Apple Music, for example, charges individuals $10.99 a month for unlimited streaming, including access to lossless, high-resolution, and Dolby Atmos tracks. Amazon Music Unlimited also includes lossless streaming, albeit for $11.99 a month following a recent price hike.
It seems Spotify is hoping that music remixing and concert discounts will help sweeten the Music Pro pot. If that’s the case, it would be following in the footsteps of Tidal, which has a “DJ Extension” remixing add-on that costs $9 a month on top of its $10.99/month individual plan.
Spotify first announced its lossless music plans in February 2021, touting Spotify HiFi as a way for subscribers to “upgrade their sound quality” to a “CD-quality, lossless audio format.” Spotify said its new HiFi offering would arrive later that year.
But just a few months later, Amazon Music and Apple Music kicked off lossless streaming for their subscribers at no extra cost, a development that likely caught Spotify flat-footed.
Since then, there have been dribs and drabs of Spotify HiFi rumors. Last year, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek finally revived the Spotify lossless talk, announcing that a “deluxe version of Spotify” with “a lot higher quality across the board” and “some other things” was on tap, for “something like $5 above the current premium tier.”