

This means that many people can’t even tell the difference between lossy and lossless. Furthermore, bitrates of compressed streams are pretty much maxed out on all music streamers these days. In all these cases, due to compression losses of Bluetooth codecs, you will never fully benefit from a better sound quality anyway, even if the source is lossless. Listening in a car – also via Bluetooth – is a popular activity too. Or they connect via the very same Bluetooth to a mediocore hi-fi set or wireless speaker (think teenagers, camping and so on). The vast majority of subscribers to a music service listen through headphones, usually a wireless Bluetooth one. Since Spotify is strategically positioned as a service that isn’t restricted to an ecosystem, HiFi availability should help retain users and potentially attract new users.Let’s be very honest. Case in point: While you can download Spotify from Microsoft Store on Windows and download music offline, you should either stick with the outdated iTunes, Apple Music web player, or enable the Windows Subsystem for Android to use Apple Music on Windows 11 for offline downloads if you jumped ship for HiFi streaming and are not part of the Apple ecosystem. Undeniably some of the biggest strengths of Spotify are cross-platform availability and Spotify Connect. Even if it is delayed, possibly to next year, revealing the updated timeline will help customers decide if they would rather wait or switch to competing services like Apple Music, Qobuz, or TIDAL. Often regarded as a company that takes feedback from the community seriously, the least Spotify could do right now is share an update on the current status of Spotify HiFi. Spotify didn’t respond to our request for an official comment at the time of writing this article. Since Spotify is surprisingly silent about the existence of Spotify HiFi, all these are speculations for now, and we don’t have an official word on what’s exactly causing the delay.

A massive chunk of the Spotify library was missing in India due to a licensing issue with Warner Music Group. The streaming giant is no stranger to such hurdles, as we have already heard of (and seen) music labels hold Spotify’s expansion in India hostage for close to two years.


Spotify might be facing hurdles with leading music labels to kickstart the transition and expand deals. Although unlikely, pushing podcasts and podcast-centric features might have forced the company to put Spotify HiFi on the backburner.Īnd let’s not forget the complex world of music licensing deals. As you might be aware, Spotify has been heavily focusing on podcasts lately and has been striking deals with high-profile personalities such as Joe Rogan and Michelle Obama. Another possibility why Spotify HiFi is still not available could be due to a perceivable change in priorities.
