The Spotify HiFi tier did not meet its expected release schedule in 2021 as the new calendar year of 2022 has already begun, leaving speculation to arise as to why Spotify was unable to officially release the tier.
On February 22 in 2021, Spotify released a news post announcing the anticipated HiFi quality tier to its subscription plans. The post briefly summarizes what Spotify HiFi is supposed to achieve and general information about its availability in international markets.
The post was coupled with a short video featuring artist Billie Eilish and record producer Finneas O’Connell discussing about the advantages of high-fidelity audio and their excitement to see Spotify introduce HiFi audio.
“High quality audio means just more info,” says Eilish. “There’s just things you will not hear if you don’t have a good sound system.”
The absence of Spotify HiFi in 2021 is diminished by Apple Music introducing lossless HiFi audio in June of the same year at no extra cost to users. An Apple Music subscription plan to access HiFi audio is $9.99 a month while Spotify’s Premium non-HiFi plan is priced at the same monthly rate.
Apple Music along with other audio streaming platforms that emphasize on high-fidelity audio such as Tidal or Qobuz may be an influence in delaying or canceling the release of Spotify HiFi. This may be due to the relatively small market of HiFi audio where Spotify already competes with rival platforms despite having a different use case than a service like Tidal.
Spotify has one of the largest song and podcast libraries available which rivaling streaming platforms do not always have the proper licensing to match up to that scale. While it is unknown exactly how many songs Spotify hosts on the platform, other platforms do not host the same amount of “indie” or “start-up” artists that Spotify does.
Spotify has not released a statement as to the development or cancellation of their HiFi tier following their initial announcement in February 2021.
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