Spotify HiFi is reportedly on its way as a ‘Supremium’ subscription in 2023
The service will offer CD-quality playback and “expanded access” to audiobooks
Photo: Dennis Diatel / Alamy
After two years since Spotify HiFi was announced, new reports suggest that Spotify will finally release it in 2023 as part of a ‘Supremium’ subscription tier.
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According to Bloomberg, the internally-named Supremium plan could be rolled out within the upcoming months. It will bring CD-quality audio listening and further audiobook access to users for a higher monthly fee.
With the new rollout, it’s expected that Spotify Premium subscribers will be given a limited number of audiobooks to access per month or a limited number of hours. However, those on Spotify’s Supremium tier will have “expanded access” to audiobooks – admittedly still a vague proposition.
As per the report, Spotify HiFi will be available to non-US markets first.
Spotify HiFi was first announced in February 2021 but the brand has been relatively quiet since Apple Music and Amazon Music unveiled their lossless listening and spatial audio, with Apple offering the service at no extra cost to its subscribers.
In March 2023, tech publication The Verge heard from Spotify’s co-president Gustav Söderström that the “Spotify HiFi has basically been ready to go for over a year” and that “employees have access to it.”
“We are going to [release it], but we’re going to do it in a way where it makes sense for us and for our listeners. The industry changed [following Apple Music and Amazon Music’s announcements] and we had to adapt.”
Spotify has been ramping up its feature set in other areas recently, most notably with the introduction of several AI-assisted tools. The app’s Spotify DJ feature, created in partnership with OpenAI, curates music for your current mood or specific genre and even comes with a voice model of a DJ that lays down commentary in between tracks. Earlier this month, the brand began rolling out its AI artwork function, which analyses your playlists and generates custom artwork based on the music.
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