After years of promises and delays, Spotify is finally rolling out lossless, CD-quality audio to its Premium subscribers. The company announced that the highly requested feature is beginning to appear for users in over 50 countries at no additional cost, years after competitors like Apple Music and Amazon Music made high-fidelity streaming a standard part of their paid plans. Subscribers will be able to stream “nearly every song” in Spotify’s catalog in up to 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC format, a significant upgrade from the compressed audio the platform has offered until now.
How to get your hi-fi fix
Once the feature is activated on your account, you’ll receive a notification in the app. To enable it, you’ll need to navigate to Settings & Privacy, then Media Quality, and select “Lossless” as your preferred quality for Wi-Fi, cellular, or downloads. This setting must be enabled manually on each device.
However, getting the most out of lossless audio comes with a few caveats. Because lossless files are much larger, Spotify recommends using a wired connection to headphones or speakers. The company notes that Bluetooth currently lacks the bandwidth to transmit the full quality of a lossless stream, forcing the signal to be compressed. The feature is also available through Spotify Connect on supported devices from brands like Sony, Bose, and Sennheiser, with support for Sonos and Amazon devices planned for October. The lossless option applies only to music, not to podcasts or audiobooks.
Years late to the party
Spotify’s path to lossless audio has been a long one. The company first announced “Spotify HiFi” back in February 2021, promising a launch later that year. That launch never materialized, and by 2022, the project was put on indefinite hold. In the meantime, the competitive landscape shifted dramatically when Apple Music and Amazon Music both began offering lossless and hi-res audio to their subscribers for free in 2021.
That move likely scuttled Spotify’s rumored plans for a pricier “Supremium” tier that would have included high-fidelity audio as a key selling point. Now, Spotify is essentially playing catch-up. “The wait is finally over,” said Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify’s VP of subscriptions, in a statement. “We’ve taken time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality, ease of use, and clarity at every step.”
The rollout is happening gradually through October. Users in the US, UK, Australia, Japan, Germany, and several other countries are among the first to gain access.
