I fondly remember the day Spotify HiFi was announced, February 23, 2021. Personally, it was one of the biggest announcements of the year, and exactly what I’ve been asking for for years; so the lack of news since then has made me more frustrated than usual.
[Lo nuevo de Spotify es una Inteligencia Artificial que hace de DJ y te habla]
HiFi was presented as a new option for sound lovers and so-called “audiophiles”; although I think all users can benefit from the increase in sound quality However, the past two years have shown me that Spotify’s priorities, and perhaps those of users, are different.
The Spotify HiFi Tragedy
When first introduced, Spotify HiFi didn’t have a specific launch date, but the company promised we’d know more by the end of 2021; I think there is no need to recall the situation at that time, and the worldwide debacle which caused delays and cancellations throughout the sector. Since then, HiFi has not even been mentioned by Spotify.
However, there are reasons to think that HiFi was going to cease to be important for Spotify even without considering the situation at the time; and do Spotify has found a vein with podcasts which has been going on ever since.
The vast majority of new Spotify app features released in recent years have been around podcasts, to the point that they’ve come to completely dominate the app space; and if you’re like me and you’ve never enjoyed podcasts, that’s a tragedy. The app was filled with parts I didn’t care aboutwhen all I wanted was to listen to music.
I’m not the only one who sees this as a problem; a few months ago, Spotify had to redesign the app to separate music from podcasts in response to criticism. At least in that sense, we music lovers haven’t been completely let down, but that’s the only “victory” we can claim in the past two years.
It’s not that we don’t have alternatives. Apple and Amazon have both released high-definition music for their streaming services, including spatial sound, capable of playing instruments in an immersive way. And to this we must add the great reference of the sector in terms of sound quality, Tidal.
The other day I realized that I haven’t used Spotify for a long time. I’ve simply used other services when I wanted to listen to a particular recording using my wired headphones and DAC. And if I don’t mind standard definition music, I have YouTube Music, which is improving by leaps and bounds and comes with YouTube Premium.
Ok, if you listen to music mainly on your mobile, surely all this does not matter to you; but it should be very soon. Currently, wireless headphones are not able to take advantage of the leap in quality that high definition music entails; but the advent of new technologies like aptX Lossless is changing that. And in this situation, Spotify has no way to take advantage of our audio equipment.
Spotify isn’t just for music, for better or for worse
We can speculate a lot about the reasons that pushed Spotify to “forget” the HiFi. There is technical reasons, Of course. A high-definition music file occupies more storage space than a regular file, which means improving and extending the platform. There’s also the issue of getting high-definition versions of songs uploaded to the platform, which isn’t always possible. I’m convinced that with Spotify’s huge library, the company’s engineers have a big challenge ahead.
It seems unbelievable that the app that managed to change the way we enjoy music has seemingly “forgotten” its original purpose. But the reality is that almost from the start, the company has tried to diversify its commitment, instead of focusing exclusively on sound. Do you remember when she wanted to include videos as an alternative to YouTube, or when she launched her version of Clubhouse, the app for chat rooms?
But there are reasons to be optimistic that Spotify hasn’t abandoned its original users. Today, the company introduced a new feature related to music playback, Spotify DJ, an artificial intelligence that creates personalized playlists. And a few months ago, the existence of a new plan, Spotify Platinum, would have included high definition audio.
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