A free ‘music for everyone’ catalogue, innovative music discovery, and an interface as intuitive as they come – it’s little wonder Spotify is the world’s most popular service and has carried a five-star What Hi-Fi? verdict for more years than I have been on the team (eleven). But time waits for no man, or indeed streaming service, and as rivals such as Tidal, Apple Music and Amazon Music have blessed their subscribers with much higher-quality (hi-res) streams, Spotify has well and truly fallen behind. It was high time for me and other members of team What Hi-Fi? to revisit our Spotify review, and while we never enjoy downgrading product ratings, we felt we had to dock it a star for the first time in its 17-year lifetime.
Indeed, while Tidal (our current favourite), Apple Music and Qobuz can bask in their five-star delivery of hi-res (24-bit) streaming quality, alongside catalogues and user experiences that have more or less closed the gap on the green streaming giant in recent years, Spotify is, believe it or not, still offering the same audio quality (320kbps) it began offering Premium subscribers 15 long years ago. While 320kbps bitrates were reasonably considered “high-quality” for streams back in 2009, they are about as advanced in the streaming world today as CRTs are in the TV one.
This hasn’t all eluded the world’s most valuable music company, of course. For the uninitiated, Spotify did indeed announce its intentions to grace its good users with higher-quality audio – not hi-res, but next-best CD-quality (‘lossless’) – in 2021, and like many of us I’ve been frustratingly holding out for that promise to materialise. The delay hasn’t impeded subscriber growth, with paying subscriber numbers continuing to steadily rise, and I’m not oblivious to the fact that many people simply don’t (and won’t ever) prioritise audio quality enough to shun a service that largely ticks every other box for them. But the absence of high-quality audio has taken a toll on its merit for us and anyone else who cares about sound quality.
To cut a (very) long story short, higher-quality audio is still supposedly coming to Spotify and could now emerge as something different to the originally announced ‘Spotify HiFi’ tier. It could even arrive with a different name.
Having re-reviewed Spotify in recent weeks, and compared it directly against Tidal, here is what I believe Spotify’s forthcoming plan needs for the service to, in terms of quality and value, regain its position at the front of the pack.
1. To keep its price within reach
At £11.99 / $11.99 / AU$13.99, Spotify Premium's monthly fee is already one shiny pound coin (or dollar) more than the paid tiers of Apple Music and Tidal. According to the latest Spotify HiFi rumours, high-quality audio is expected to come via a higher-priced plan or, more likely, a Premium tier add-on. Spotify's CEO, Daniel Ek, said recently that we are looking at "probably around a $17 or $18 price point", which would be 54 to 63 per cent higher than its rivals' asking prices.
Under this higher price could well be additional features that its competitors don't offer – advanced mixing tools, a headphones optimiser and library filtering functions have been rumoured – and you could argue that some sort of premium is justified for the Spotify experience. But $17/18 – about £14 / AU$25 – does seem an awful lot when folks have become used to having the world's music at their fingertips for a tenner a month for years.
2. To extend high-quality audio past Spotify Connect
When Spotify HiFi was announced, the idea was that lossless streams would be delivered via Spotify Connect, a streaming protocol that lets you quickly and easily cast songs from within the Spotify app to compatible audio devices, from wireless speakers to music streamers (nowadays, it is supported by pretty much all streaming-savvy audio hardware). That method of delivery still seems sensible and would be a boon for many who play streamed music through a home audio system. After all, the similar Tidal Connect feature (for Tidal, of course) supports hi-res casting, although Apple Music's AirPlay 2 casting method does not.
But considering those two rival services support lossless and hi-res audio via their native iOS, Android and desktop apps, we would hope for the same in-app support from Spotify. Perhaps this has always been Spotify's intention and it simply chose not to mention it in the original announcement, but as time has gone by it now seems imperative that lossless playback is supported on phones, tablets and computers.
3. To go beyond CD-quality 'lossless' audio
Spotify officially promised 'lossless' (16-bit CD-quality) audio via its HiFi plan, whereas Tidal, Apple, Amazon and Qobuz now offer lossless and, better yet, 24-bit hi-res audio. Honestly, most Spotify subscribers – even those who care about audio quality enough to pay more for it – will likely be perfectly happy with CD quality. Significant (or even any) audible differences between CD and hi-res quality would only be apparent and therefore meaningful through insightful audio or hi-fi systems anyway – not typical wireless headphones and Bluetooth speakers.
But for sound-prioritising owners of transparent kit who likely would benefit from the jump from 16-bit to 24, Spotify's 'only' lossless catalogue could face a tough time tearing them away from their current hi-res service. And if we are benchmarking Spotify against its rivals for outright value, sound quality is the most important factor in how What Hi-Fi? reaches verdicts for all audio products and services it tests, so falling beneath its peers' specification here, despite an upgrade to lossless, might not cut it.
However, with the ideal upgrades mentioned above, at a competitive price, bolstering its already class-leading music discovery, strong podcast offering, ubiquitous device support and pop-culture wins (like ‘Wrapped’), Tidal et al will undoubtedly have a tough time getting their noses back in front. Spotify would not only continue to be the most popular service but also one of, if not the, highest in quality. It's been a long time since that was the case, but such a conquest could be nigh.
MORE:
Everything you need to know about the forthcoming Spotify HiFi tier
Read our recently rewritten Spotify review
Care about quality? We have compared the hi-res music streaming services
Hot off the press: Qobuz targets budding audiophiles with a heavily discounted student tier
