Spotify has announced that it is providing lossless audio quality for users. The music streaming platform originally announced CD quality music playback in February 2021.
After only a short span of four years, the feature is finally here. do you know Users were requesting for lossless quality streaming On Spotify for a decade? Apple Music has provided lossless support for 4 years, so has Amazon Music HD (not in all countries).
Spotify free users, you better look away now. Lossless is only for premium subscribers. All joking aside, even if you are a premium user, you shouldn’t get too excited. Spotify’s announcement says It is gradually rolling out lossless quality in 50 markets by October. Premium subscribers have started getting access to lossless quality in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, US, and UK.
Premium users will be able to stream high-fidelity music up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC. Once you get notified that lossless is available on your account, you’ll need to enable it from your Profile > Settings > Media Quality. Set the quality to Lossless, and set your network preference to WiFi, Cellular, Downloads. You can start listening to Hi-Fi music, the quality will appear as lossless 16-bit or lossless 24-bit. And yes, it is only available for music, other content like music videos, podcasts, audiobooks are not available in Hi-Fi. Users can also set the quality from the Connect menu. You’ll need to switch to Lossless on each device, as the setting uses a large amount of data to download/stream music. As for downloaded songs, they will play in the same quality in which they were downloaded. So you need to clear your offline backups and downloads, and download them again in lossless quality.
Lossless Spotify is supported on mobile, desktop and tablet. You can also access it on devices that support Spotify Connect, such as Sony, Bose, Samsung, Sennheiser, etc. Spotify says it will soon add support for more devices like Sonos and Amazon. Spotify recommends using wired headphones or speakers for lossless listening.
Earlier this year, Spotify was said to be working on a Music Pro plan that would offer hi-fi music at an additional cost. But the real surprise is that Spotify is still not charging extra for lossless quality. Meanwhile, Google is trying to make lyrics a premium feature on YouTube Music.
Which music streaming service do you use?
