In February 2021, Spotify announced its high-quality audio offering, called HiFi, and released a promotional video featuring Billie Eilish and her brother/producer, Finneas , waxing about the benefits of listening to recordings in their natural state rather than the compressed files that became standard in the digital era. “The streaming war is going Hi-Fi,” Billboard proclaimed a few months later. But it was a false start.
Spotify’s HiFi didn’t materialize, and the company officially announced its delay in January 2022. There were rumblings about HiFi in June 2023, but the rumors amounted to nothing. Instead, Spotify pushed ahead with building an all-in-one audio platform by building its podcast business and launching an audiobook offering.
Now, HiFi appears to be back on track. This month, news broke that Spotify will finally launch a high-definition audio tier later this year. Still called HiFi, Spotify will offer the tier for an extra $5 per month for individual plans ($16.
99 compared to $11.99, which bakes in an expected $1 increase from the current $10.99), according to a Bloomberg report.
The HiFi tier for family plans is reported to be $19.99, $3 more than the current $16.99.
Waiting three years could come with some advantages. First, there’s a large addressable market that wants high-quality audio. A 2023 MusicWatch survey found that 85 million Americans aged 13 and over agreed that obtaining the highest sound quality is important and that they would be wil.
