Fingers crossed: Spotify might actually launch lossless audio in 2024

AppleInsider

After years of promises and nothing to show for it, a new leak suggests that Spotify may actually be close to launching lossless audio on its service. Maybe.

Spotify logo

Lossless audio is a music streaming feature that purportedly offers extremely high fidelity audio via sky-high bitrates. It's a big draw for audiophiles, but not every major streaming service offers it.

Following two weeks after a leak that Spotify HiFi may finally be on the way, another collection of leaks offer more details. According to another Reddit leak spotted by The Verge, one change is a rebranding away from "HiFi" and to the generally used term "Lossless."

The new leak from u/OhitsTom consists of screenshots supposedly taken from version 1.2.36 of the service's app for Windows. Listed under Streaming quality is an option for Lossless, listed as the highest of the five available.

Lossless is described as music that runs at up to 2,117kbps, at up to 15.9 megabytes per minute. By comparison, "Very High" is 320kbps, consuming 2MB per minute.

Leaked UI elements for Spotify lossless audio [Reddit]

The lossless audio is also 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC. There's an additional note that lossless will "play when available" when the option is set, and it is available "on limited songs."

The images also show a compatibility checker, which offers further advice for downloading music in lossless. It also warns that Bluetooth can offer very high quality audio, but not full lossless support.

A wired connection is offered as the best way to enjoy Lossless. However, the same section advises that users could use Spotify Connect on speakers.

Despite appearing in the UI, the leaker says that the feature is only present in the interface, but not working. It's seemingly not possible to listen to lossless music from Spotify, at least pre-launch.

Just the latest chapter in a long string of broken promises

The new leaks of Spotify getting lossless audio may be of little comfort to users. Mainly because it has been in development for so long.

In February 2022, Spotify HiFi was announced as a way to stream a CD-quality lossless audio format to users. At the time, it was expected to launch later in 2021.

Two years later, the prospect of the service was raised again. This time, a "Supremium" tier was proposed, with expectation of a launch in late 2023.

If the service does actually launch this time, Spotify's feature will arrive long after rivals have implemented theirs.

While Apple Music announced Lossless in May 2021, less than a month went by before it actually made the feature available to the public. Unlike rumors about Spotify, Apple's Lossless feature was included as part of the existing subscription.

Many other major services have lossless streaming, including Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, and Pandora.



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cujoyyc

I'm sure the delay is Apple's fault.
 

xyzzy01

CuJoYYC said:

I'm sure the delay is Apple's fault.
 

That's likely, actually. Before Apple launched lossless with no change in price, it was an option that came at a premium. When Apple just included it in their normal subscription, launching it at a higher price tier was less attractive - and adding it to their normal subscription wo ld just cost Spotify more in fees and bandwidth.

Spotify makes their living from their service, for Apple it's just a part of keeping you in the eco system.

applezulu

xyzzy01 said:

CuJoYYC said:

I'm sure the delay is Apple's fault.
 

That's likely, actually. Before Apple launched lossless with no change in price, it was an option that came at a premium. When Apple just included it in their normal subscription, launching it at a higher price tier was less attractive - and adding it to their normal subscription wo ld just cost Spotify more in fees and bandwidth.

Spotify makes their living from their service, for Apple it's just a part of keeping you in the eco system.

Apple's decision to make lossless and spatial audio formats available at no extra cost is what moved those things (particularly spatial audio) from niche formats into the mainstream. Tidal had Dolby Atmos a year before Apple, but paying extra for it was a truly unrewarding experience. The extra cost kept the user base small, which made the incentive to produce and make content available in those formats correspondingly small. It was a death-spiral. A few months after signing up, you'd listened to what they had, and new premium content was arriving at a slow trickle. Then Apple opened lossless and spatial audio up to all of its subscribers, and there was suddenly a reason to make the effort to produce and master lossless and spatial audio content, and there's been a flood of it rolling out since.

On the one hand, that surely threw a kink into Spotify's plans of charging a premium to pay for building out the storage and bandwidth, but on the other hand, because of Apple, there's already a lot of content produced and made available in high resolution formats. 

It's interesting, however, that even at this point, it looks like Spotify is wimping out quite a bit. There's no mention of spatial audio at all, and while it appears they're going to have full 24-bit depth on the vertical axis, they're limiting the sampling rate (the horizontal axis) to 14.1 kHz, the bare minimum to qualify. Apple's lossless streaming is up to 24-bit/48kHz, and you can download 24-bit/192kHz audio files. 

While it's true that Apple has a whole ecosystem to support their decisions, it's doubtful that they're taking a financial loss beyond the very short term to implement their lossless and spatial audio music formats. I probably wouldn't recommend investing in Spotify, because they truly seem to lack the fundamentals at both ends of their business. They're on the low end for paying out to artists for content (the thing they sell), and are clearly struggling to generate the revenue required to keep up with the now-inevitable shift to lossless and spatial audio formats, the merging standard for the thing they sell. Talk about a death spiral, you may be looking at one right there. 

alex_v

xyzzy01 said:

Spotify makes their living from their service, for Apple it's just a part of keeping you in the eco system.

Apple makes money by selling computer hardware, software, and services, which are well integrated and make up their ‘ecosystem.’ Still, Apple intends to profit (sooner or later) from each part of the ecosystem, including services like Music. If not, or if any part is not profitable enough, it gets the axe. 

macxpress

People still use Spotify? 

paisleydisco

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

Yes. All the Spotify BS aside, their algorithm is superior to Apple Music. It just is. The recommendations, the playlists are just way better than anything Apple is doing with Music. 

rockwelljacobs

Fingers crossed they actually pay songwriters. They are crooks. DROP SPOTIFY….Pay for the music. 

davidw

paisleydisco said:

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

Yes. All the Spotify BS aside, their algorithm is superior to Apple Music. It just is. The recommendations, the playlists are just way better than anything Apple is doing with Music. 

It's "superior" because Spotify collects way more data about their users than Apple. The ads in Spotify free ad-supported tier are targeted to the listeners, based on the data Spotify mined from their listeners. That data is also used when recommending songs for listeners. But because Apple do not sell targeted ads to its Apple Music subscribers, they have no need to mine as much data from them. Thus less data points from which to use when coming up with recommended music for their listeners.

https://www.wired.com/story/spotify-tracking-how-to-stop-it/

>It's this behavioral data that helps Spotify go big on personalization. Its privacy policy says it can use your data for personalization, troubleshooting, developing new features and technology, marketing and advertising, research, and for other legal reasons. Many of these personalization features are likely to involve systems that recommend new music and playlists to you.<

jimh2

I am surprised the EU allows Spotify to harvest user data to profit off of them. Seems to go against all of their privacy laws.

ihatescreennames

jimh2 said:

I am surprised the EU allows Spotify to harvest user data to profit off of them. Seems to go against all of their privacy laws.

Not surprising. Spotify is conveniently below any threshold that is set to have no user tracking enforced. In theory they could one day qualify to be forced into offering a tier that is free to use AND has no user tracking, like is being expected of Facebook, but I don’t think that will happen any time soon. 

danvm

davidw said:

paisleydisco said:

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

Yes. All the Spotify BS aside, their algorithm is superior to Apple Music. It just is. The recommendations, the playlists are just way better than anything Apple is doing with Music. 

It's "superior" because Spotify collects way more data about their users than Apple. The ads in Spotify free ad-supported tier are targeted to the listeners, based on the data Spotify mined from their listeners. That data is also used when recommending songs for listeners. But because Apple do not sell targeted ads to its Apple Music subscribers, they have no need to mine as much data from them. Thus less data points from which to use when coming up with recommended music for their listeners.

https://www.wired.com/story/spotify-tracking-how-to-stop-it/

>It's this behavioral data that helps Spotify go big on personalization. Its privacy policy says it can use your data for personalization, troubleshooting, developing new features and technology, marketing and advertising, research, and for other legal reasons. Many of these personalization features are likely to involve systems that recommend new music and playlists to you.<

Apple collects data too from Apple Music subscribers.  It looks like Spotify do a better job with the data it collects.  I have Apple Music because of sound quality, but the app, IMO, is not good at all. 

Apple collects information about your Apple Music and Apple Music Classical activity, such as the songs you play and how long you play them, to personalize the services when you are subscribed, send you notifications, and compensate our partners.

When you use your Apple Music subscription or play free content outside of your library, we may collect information about the songs and videos (where applicable) you play or add to your music library or playlists and the artists and content you favorite or share. Information such as the account, IP address, and device, app, or car interface you used to play, where in Apple Music or Apple Music Classical you were when you played it, the time you played it, and for how long is noted and sent to Apple. We use this information to customize your experience, to send you emails and notifications, and to help us understand how Apple Music and Apple Music Classical are being used so we may improve our services. For example, this information can help us pick the music, videos, and artist content that we show you in Apple Music and Apple Music Classical. It also allows us to make other recommendations to you that reflect your tastes, create city charts to show you trending music by city, and to provide personalized Apple Music search results using a mix of information such as your listening history and your favorite genres. 

Legal - Apple Music & Privacy - Apple

davidw

danvm said:

davidw said:

paisleydisco said:

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

Yes. All the Spotify BS aside, their algorithm is superior to Apple Music. It just is. The recommendations, the playlists are just way better than anything Apple is doing with Music. 

It's "superior" because Spotify collects way more data about their users than Apple. The ads in Spotify free ad-supported tier are targeted to the listeners, based on the data Spotify mined from their listeners. That data is also used when recommending songs for listeners. But because Apple do not sell targeted ads to its Apple Music subscribers, they have no need to mine as much data from them. Thus less data points from which to use when coming up with recommended music for their listeners.

https://www.wired.com/story/spotify-tracking-how-to-stop-it/

>It's this behavioral data that helps Spotify go big on personalization. Its privacy policy says it can use your data for personalization, troubleshooting, developing new features and technology, marketing and advertising, research, and for other legal reasons. Many of these personalization features are likely to involve systems that recommend new music and playlists to you.<

Apple collects data too from Apple Music subscribers.  It looks like Spotify do a better job with the data it collects.  I have Apple Music because of sound quality, but the app, IMO, is not good at all. 

Apple collects information about your Apple Music and Apple Music Classical activity, such as the songs you play and how long you play them, to personalize the services when you are subscribed, send you notifications, and compensate our partners.

When you use your Apple Music subscription or play free content outside of your library, we may collect information about the songs and videos (where applicable) you play or add to your music library or playlists and the artists and content you favorite or share. Information such as the account, IP address, and device, app, or car interface you used to play, where in Apple Music or Apple Music Classical you were when you played it, the time you played it, and for how long is noted and sent to Apple. We use this information to customize your experience, to send you emails and notifications, and to help us understand how Apple Music and Apple Music Classical are being used so we may improve our services. For example, this information can help us pick the music, videos, and artist content that we show you in Apple Music and Apple Music Classical. It also allows us to make other recommendations to you that reflect your tastes, create city charts to show you trending music by city, and to provide personalized Apple Music search results using a mix of information such as your listening history and your favorite genres. 

Legal - Apple Music & Privacy - Apple

It's not so much that Spotify do a better job with the data they collect on their users but that Spotify collects way more data about their users. They have to because Spotify is part ad company and targeted ads pays for their free ad-supported tier. (Though musicians/songwriter earns just a small fraction from ad revenue, when compared to revenue from paid subscriptions.).

Apple do not need to know that their users visit Starbucks 3x a week, or work out at at a gym, or work from home or their age or shop on Amazon or what college they are attending or any of the other data about their users that mainly help in targeted ads. So not only can Spotify recommend songs based on what other listeners that have the same songs on their playlist, are listening to, Spotify algorithm can place more emphasis on the playlists of listeners that are more similar to you and have similar interest.

For instance, if you're attending UCLA, Spotify song recommendations can put more emphasis on the playlists of other listeners attending UCLA or that are attending other colleges. Figuring a listener attending college will have more similar taste is music than listeners working part time at a fast food diner while still in HS. Even though those listeners playlists have some of the same songs that are on your playlist.  

It's the same reason why an Apple search engine will never be as successful as Google search engine (if success is measured by how much revenue it brings in). Apple is not an ad company and have no need to collect as much data as possible about their users.

Not to mention that Spoftiy have over 600M music listeners (including those using their free ad-supported tier.) That's over 6x more data points than Apple, when just using songs on a listener playlist to compare to other listeners playlists, as a starting point for recommending songs.

kmarei

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

Actually about 3 times as many users  as Apple Music
spotify has more users than Apple Music, Amazon prime, AND YouTube music combined 

edited May 2024

danvm

davidw said:

danvm said:

davidw said:

paisleydisco said:

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

Yes. All the Spotify BS aside, their algorithm is superior to Apple Music. It just is. The recommendations, the playlists are just way better than anything Apple is doing with Music. 

It's "superior" because Spotify collects way more data about their users than Apple. The ads in Spotify free ad-supported tier are targeted to the listeners, based on the data Spotify mined from their listeners. That data is also used when recommending songs for listeners. But because Apple do not sell targeted ads to its Apple Music subscribers, they have no need to mine as much data from them. Thus less data points from which to use when coming up with recommended music for their listeners.

https://www.wired.com/story/spotify-tracking-how-to-stop-it/

>It's this behavioral data that helps Spotify go big on personalization. Its privacy policy says it can use your data for personalization, troubleshooting, developing new features and technology, marketing and advertising, research, and for other legal reasons. Many of these personalization features are likely to involve systems that recommend new music and playlists to you.<

Apple collects data too from Apple Music subscribers.  It looks like Spotify do a better job with the data it collects.  I have Apple Music because of sound quality, but the app, IMO, is not good at all. 

Apple collects information about your Apple Music and Apple Music Classical activity, such as the songs you play and how long you play them, to personalize the services when you are subscribed, send you notifications, and compensate our partners.

When you use your Apple Music subscription or play free content outside of your library, we may collect information about the songs and videos (where applicable) you play or add to your music library or playlists and the artists and content you favorite or share. Information such as the account, IP address, and device, app, or car interface you used to play, where in Apple Music or Apple Music Classical you were when you played it, the time you played it, and for how long is noted and sent to Apple. We use this information to customize your experience, to send you emails and notifications, and to help us understand how Apple Music and Apple Music Classical are being used so we may improve our services. For example, this information can help us pick the music, videos, and artist content that we show you in Apple Music and Apple Music Classical. It also allows us to make other recommendations to you that reflect your tastes, create city charts to show you trending music by city, and to provide personalized Apple Music search results using a mix of information such as your listening history and your favorite genres. 

Legal - Apple Music & Privacy - Apple

It's not so much that Spotify do a better job with the data they collect on their users but that Spotify collects way more data about their users. They have to because Spotify is part ad company and targeted ads pays for their free ad-supported tier. (Though musicians/songwriter earns just a small fraction from ad revenue, when compared to revenue from paid subscriptions.).

Apple do not need to know that their users visit Starbucks 3x a week, or work out at at a gym, or work from home or their age or shop on Amazon or what college they are attending or any of the other data about their users that mainly help in targeted ads. So not only can Spotify recommend songs based on what other listeners that have the same songs on their playlist, are listening to, Spotify algorithm can place more emphasis on the playlists of listeners that are more similar to you and have similar interest.

For instance, if you're attending UCLA, Spotify song recommendations can put more emphasis on the playlists of other listeners attending UCLA or that are attending other colleges. Figuring a listener attending college will have more similar taste is music than listeners working part time at a fast food diner while still in HS. Even though those listeners playlists have some of the same songs that are on your playlist.  

It's the same reason why an Apple search engine will never be as successful as Google search engine (if success is measured by how much revenue it brings in). Apple is not an ad company and have no need to collect as much data as possible about their users.

Not to mention that Spoftiy have over 600M music listeners (including those using their free ad-supported tier.) That's over 6x more data points than Apple, when just using songs on a listener playlist to compare to other listeners playlists, as a starting point for recommending songs.

I agree that Spotify has a far larger customer base (600M vs 88M).  But 88M are a lot of customers, and Apple could improve a lot their app, playlists and recommendations with the data they collect from them. 

cropr

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

With the exception of the US, Spotify is the undisputed market leader for audio streaming. In a lot of countries Spotify is even the market leader among iPhones users.   

40domi

jimh2 said:

I am surprised the EU allows Spotify to harvest user data to profit off of them. Seems to go against all of their privacy laws.

Spotify don't pay the artists what they should, they just pay the Eurocrats to get what they want

40domi

Bad company like Epic. I have no time for either and only fools do 

mplsp

I still get a kick out of people clamoring for lossless audio. Even with the proper equipment precious few can tell the difference and most people listen on a pair of Bluetooth AirPods or Beats headphones that are incapable of rendering the difference. My favorite was people on a Tesla forum wanting lossless audio. ‘Cause you can absolutely hear the difference while driving a car with wind and road noise!

The high quality AAC and MP3 codecs are more than good enough for all except some professionals who have the equipment and trained ears. I suppose we should include the people who like to pretend they can hear the difference so they can think they are more discerning and ‘professional’ than everyone else in that group.

auxio

paisleydisco said:

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

Yes. All the Spotify BS aside, their algorithm is superior to Apple Music. It just is. The recommendations, the playlists are just way better than anything Apple is doing with Music. 

And finding music which was paid to be put in front of me is something I could care less about. The only reason I've ever needed to use Spotify was to share music playlists with friends (something Apple doesn't do a great job of). But I found that half the time when I pressed the play button, it wasn't able to play the song (started playing the next song in the list). And when it finally did, an ad came up. Truly awful experience.

edited May 2024