Spotify is planning to launch a new premium plan later this year, targeting its most devoted users with an additional charge of at least $5 per month, according to Bloomberg. This higher tier is said to offer high fidelity or ‘HiFi’ audio quality and special features for playlist creation and music library management.
When combined with the upcoming price increase of the Spotify Premium plan to $11.99, the total cost will rise to $16.99. The Family fee is changing too with an increase to $19.99 a month instead of $16.99. This upping of prices makes Spotify more expensive than competitor Apple Music, with their plans being similar to the streaming platform’s previous price tag.
The upgrade will also allow users to create custom playlists for specific activities, occasions, and seasons.
Is Spotify ever getting HiFi?
Speaking to ReadWrite, a Spotify spokesperson said: “At Spotify, we are constantly exploring ideas to improve our product offering and offer value to users.
“But we don’t comment on speculation around possible new features and do not have anything new to share at this time.”
Spotify announced its HiFi audio feature in February 2021, but delayed the rollout. Since then, competitors like Amazon Music and Apple Music began offering higher-quality audio as part of their standard plans.
Code spotted within the Spotify app last year also suggests that the tier could come with 24-bit lossless audio, the ability to create playlists with AI, a feature that filters songs in a playlist by mood, and more.
Lossless strings in latest APK on Android
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In April, a Reddit user spotted some code that suggests that “lossless (audio) has arrived.” Lossless compression is a form of compression that preserves all of the original data.
Spotify upgrades its tech
Spotify has been venturing and expanding its offering in recent months, having launched an AI Playlist feature for users to create playlists with a prompt.
It also began adding full music videos to its platforms as part of a beta phase, which would only be rolled out to a handful of countries for Premium subscribers.
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