Spotify HiFi

That is how it typically works in my experience. Apple Music and Spotify have vastly superior algorithms for picking out new content that you may enjoy or dialing in a weekly playlist that caters to your personal tastes. I would never give up using one of them because for me the content is more important, if I have to choose, than the quality. Not interested in listening to hi-res music I don’t care about. But I also wouldn’t give up Qobuz without a fight because it definitely sounds the best and, surprisingly, it has a lot more of the contemporary music that I listen to than I ever expected.  Spotify in CD quality is a win for sure.

Totally agree with the comments of Spotify having the superior curating algorithms from my experience with all of the streaming services - Amazon included. Per my spouse, Apple’s algorithms are also up there with Spotify’s.

Also agree with the comment directly above that content is hugely important. The majority of my time is discovering music in comparison to critically listening. “Music first” is probably an appropriate hashtag that you could use here, especially if it’s true that 90% of the content is CD quality across all the currently major services (excluding Spotify and Apple for now).

@hilde45 has a recent post inquiring about the evolution of streamers and whether it’s still a moving target. I don’t think it is. The quantity and quality of the music catalogues are there within the streaming services that our streamers are utilizing. Quality in terms of more than 10% of the content being in high resolution would be the logical next step IMO. Variability in how we interpret those high resolution offerings will be for us to decide - I agree that Tidal boosts the tremble and bass in comparison to other providers.

To tie everything together, Spotify’s - and perhaps even Apple’s future plans - commitment to better quality is a win for us even if it’s just CD quality for now. This is even more true if we believe competition is healthy for consumers.

I'm most curious at to what platforms and what the requirements need to be met from those platforms to accommodate Spotify HIFI,  will those platforms be proprietary, what it will actually offer, where it will be available, when it will be available, what the costs will be, how user friendly it will be, and how bug free and reliable it will be? Until we know all that, it's still mostly vaporware. These things seem to be announced prematurely in order to build anticipation, followed by many delays, and glitches. Wake me up when there is something more concrete to consider.

Any word on release date?