Spotify CEO confirms that a ‘deluxe’ version with hi-fi audio will be released soon

The Spotify HiFi saga has many twists and turns. First announced more than three years ago, the music service’s level of high-quality streaming has yet to materialize. Recent reports claim that lossless audio will be bundled with other perks (like advanced library management, AI-powered playlists, and headphone sound quality optimization) as an add-on to Spotify’s premium subscription. And today, during Spotify’s earnings call, the company’s CEO Daniel Ek confirmed that a better offering than Premium is still in the works — although he didn’t offer a firm timeline on when it will be available.

In what might be my favorite use of a clichéd tech industry phrase, Ek said the effort is still “in its early days.” (For those keeping score at home, it’s been 1,247 days since Spotify first announced HiFi.) “The plan here is to offer a much better version of Spotify,” Ek said. “Think something like $5 above the current premium level. So it probably costs around $17 or $18, but it’s kind of a deluxe version of Spotify that has all the benefits that the regular version of Spotify has, but a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board, and a few other things. which I’m not ready to talk about yet.”

This price would match Bloomberg estimates of the tier costing about $5 extra on top of Spotify’s $11.99 monthly fee. Whatever final form Spotify’s lossless audio takes, it will be very different from what the company initially envisioned. Apparently, Spotify was caught off guard when Apple and Amazon started offering high-resolution audio as part of their standard subscription plans. The leading music streamer always intended to sell it for an additional amount.

These companies can be more aggressive with pricing since they have numerous other divisions to help offset any losses. Spotify wasn’t so lucky, so the company had to revamp its plans and create an add-on package that will hopefully appeal to as many of the app’s power users as possible. Finally, the timing seems right.

“There is a good subset of that group of 246 million subscribers who want a much better version of Spotify,” Ek said. “These are big music lovers who are primarily looking for even more flexibility in how they use Spotify and the music features that exist within Spotify.”

Bloomberg reported that Spotify intends to launch its “deluxe” version (as Ek refers to it) later this year. So after all this waiting, we only have a few months left before we learn everything the add-on plan entails.