We’re coming up on one year since Spotify announced its HiFi offering that was slated to launch sometime in 2021. However, with just about a week remaining, Spotify is close to missing that deadline. Meanwhile, Apple Music listeners have been able to enjoy HiFi Lossless audio at no extra cost since June.
All the way back in February, Spotify announced that its HiFi feature would be an add-on for its premium subscribers. At its “Stream On” event, Spotify even got Billie Eilish and Finneas to talk up the feature and said that HiFi audio was one of the top requested features from users.
Spotify never shared how much the add-on would cost but that HiFi would be arriving in select markets “later this year.”
Fast forward to May and it looked like maybe Spotify was getting close to launching HiFi as users started seeing a “HiFi” icon glitch in the app. However, it turned out to be nothing.
But also in May, Apple announced Lossless HiFi audio along with Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio coming to Apple Music and quickly launched it a month later at WWDC 21 in June.
In the second half of the year, we haven’t heard anything from Spotify on the feature. But as noted by The Verge, an on-boarding video did leak for the feature in August.
Like The Verge’s Chris Welch points out, with Apple Music beating Spotify to HiFi and offering it to subscribers at no additional cost, it may have forced Spotify to nix its plan to charge extra for the feature. And losing that financial incentive could have knocked it down on Spotify’s priority list.
We’ve reached out to Spotify asking for an update on its HiFi plans. Are you still waiting for Spotify HiFi? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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