Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says the streaming service is still in the “early days” of its plans to bring hi-fi support to the platform. During the company’s earnings call on Tuesday, the executive offered details about an upcoming deluxe tier.
Spotify announced back in 2021 that it was going to roll out a new high-end subscription tier called Spotify HiFi. At the time, the company said the tier would allow users to upgrade their sound quality to a “CD-quality, lossless audio format.” Fast-forward to the middle of 2024, and the company has yet to release the tier.
“The plan here is to offer a much better version of Spotify,” Ek said on the call with investors. “Think something like $5 above the current premium tier. So it’s probably around a $17 or $18 price point, but sort of a deluxe version of Spotify that has all of the benefits that the normal Spotify version has, but a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board, and some other things that I’m not ready to talk about just yet.”
The pricing is on-par with Bloomberg’s reporting from last month, which revealed that the higher-priced premium plan will cost at least $5 more per month. While the tier will include the long-awaited hi-fi audio streaming, it’s also reportedly going to include new tools for creating playlists, along with additional features.
“There’s a good subset of that group of 246 million subscribers that want a much better version of Spotify,” Ek said. “Those are huge music lovers who are primarily looking for even more flexibility in how they use Spotify and the music capabilities that exist on Spotify.”
Apple Music and Amazon Music have offered lossless audio streaming for years, at no extra cost. It’s unknown why it’s taking Spotify so long to release the tier, but it’s possible that the company wants to ensure that it’s offering enough value to users to charge for the addition, even as its competitors offer it for free.