Spotify has been promising this for a long time. Too much time. The greatest service of streaming musical claimed that one of their plans is to launch a high-quality modality for their subscribers, but we have been waiting for over two years without being able to glimpse anything.
And it’s not that Spotify is riding on its laurels: the work would already be done and what happened is a change of plans. A turn of course caused by Apple and its strategy, that when you understand you understand the reason for this long wait.
Audio ‘premium’ sin precio ‘premium’
A few years ago, the only service of streaming music that had a “Hi-Fi” mode was Tidal. and this modality it had a price that doubled the standard package: nearly 20 dollars per month. It was the sacrifice we had to make if we wanted to avoid audio loss.
It made sense: sending this audio quality means using more bandwidth, which requires additional effort from the servers. According to an interview The Verge gave to Spotify co-president Gustav Söderström, such a plan has been hatched and underway for the service. They were ready to release it for over a year.
The plans were overturned by Apple Music, whose prices reversed the strategy that had been until now
But ah, so what we already know happened: Apple started offering quality lossless with spatial audio and Dolby Atmos in Apple Music’s standard mode. Without paying more, without it being an extra. High quality for anyone who had headphones capable of playing it, like the AirPods Pro 2.
This derailed Spotify’s plans. Söderström claims in the interview that there is still an intention to launch a special high-quality plan and it will cost more, but now he will have to fight against the Apple Music plan which costs 10.99 dollars per month. It won’t be easy, that’s why Söderström doesn’t give any release date. What he says is that We will see it one way or another “it works cost-wise”
While we wait, Spotify will also have to keep an eye on how users react to the new “Tiktokized” interface they want to launch. For the moment the first opinions are not very good due to the random nature of the content and the imitation of social networks, even if for my part I prefer to wait to try the new experience to say my verdict.
In Applesphere | Sonos points to spatial audio: its speakers will be compatible with the best sound of Apple Music