Tidal has not recently reported its subscriber numbers, but estimates peg them at somewhere between one and three million. There's also the issue of bandwidth: higher-bitrate streaming means bigger hosting costs for Spotify. Lossless audio may be something people want, but it evidently hasn't been enough to draw people away from Spotify. RIP Tidal - It's unclear why Spotify took so long to jump on the high-fidelity bandwagon, but it probably has at least something to do with low demand. The most famous service to offer high-fidelity music, Tidal, can offer up to 9,214kbps through its Tidal Masters program which uses master recordings provided by studios.Īmazon and Sonos also offer CD-quality or better streaming, though neither comes close to Tidal Masters. CDs have a maximum bitrate of 1,411kbps, so certainly it will at least reach that threshold. Pricing is yet to be announced and, strangely, neither has the bitrate HiFi will offer when it goes live. Light on details - Of HiFi, Spotify said that high-fidelity audio is 'consistently one of the most requested new features.' It actually offered some users a high-fidelity option back in 2017 for an additional $5 to $10 per month, but that appears to have only been a limited trial. Altogether, more than a billion new people will be able to access Spotify. The announcement was made during its 'Stream On' media event today where Spotify also announced that it will be launching its streaming service in 85 new markets over the next few days, with support for 36 new languages. That's about to change, however, as the company has announced it's finally going to offer the option of streaming lossless audio through a new paid tier called Spotify HiFi.

Audiophiles have long complained about Spotify's 'very high quality' music streams that max out at 320kbps, a far lower audio resolution than what CDs offer.

Spotify high fidelity