Spotify's HiFi tier could finally be about to launch

The competition from Apple Music and Amazon messed them up. But like @loomisjohnson mentioned - none of the other providers can match their interface OR Connect. IF AM and Amazon were purely streaming based, then they could not afford what Spotify is doing. Moving to FLAC means a lot more server space and royalties. I really don't mind paying $19 for Spotify HiFi. At least the quality would be better and more royalties to the artists (that's the hope). Some music that I absolutely love - I end up buying on CD/downloads.

@milpai ,

Can you expand on why server space and royalties would increase? TIA.

Server space - FLACs probably take more space than the currently compressed files. That was the reasoning.

The reasoning behind royalties - Spotify has been having licensing issues with the content providers, which was part of their claim for delaying their HiFi.

These are assumptions on my side.

I still find Spotify to have it's place even without hi-res content, I love it in all environments outside of my two channel setup. Gym, work, car, casual listening, I use it for that almost exclusively. It still doesn't sound bad on my home setup, but clearly a step below alternatives.

If this does transpire, I hope it motivates Qobuz to finally get their act together on the connect capability. 

I’ve been with Spotify since the beginning but only used it for auditioning music before buying the physical copy. I was sent a message a couple of months ago about my subscription not being able to paid through Apple anymore so I did nothing about it.

Honestly since subscribing to Qobuz I haven’t missed it. The interface was cool but I never took advantage of any of the recommendations or automated playlists anyway. As for the Hifi higher res thing- they’ve cried wolf one too many times on that.