Spotify’s high fidelity streaming delayed indefinitely

Spotify subscribers waiting for its HiFi tier are in for a long wait.

The company announced plans for the tier back in February 2021, revealing that CD-quality streaming was one of the most requested features by users stuck with 320kbps.

The roll-out was to begin for “Premium subscribers in select markets” to upgrade… “later this year” … “and listen to their favourite songs the way artists intended.”

Plans were to team up with “some of the world’s biggest speaker manufacturers” to ensure high fidelity or lossless audio was “accessible to as many fans as possible”.

Through the year reports of screenshots of the Spotify HiFi logo on the app turned out to be dubious, followed by an onboarding video for the feature leaked online.

Eleven months after the original announcement it seems Spotify hasn’t abandoned the idea.

But it isn’t exactly forthcoming as to when it might arrive, or how many of Spotify’s 30 million songs would be available in top audio quality.

A moderator on Spotify’s forums said: “We know that HiFi quality audio is important to you.

“We feel the same, and we’re excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users in the future.

“But we don’t have timing details to share yet. We will of course update you here when we can.”

A reason for the delay is that Apple Music offers its HiFi for free, which means Spotify has been forced to rethink as it planned to charge higher than the existing Premium plan.