Three years after Spotify's original announcement that it would launch a higher-quality audio subscription, the company has yet to roll out the feature
I was really hoping I wouldn't have to do this again. Last year, it seemed like there was no reason to believe Spotify would ever roll … Threads: @joe_rosenthal , @fabiobracht , and @wongmjane . Bluesky: @martye.bsky.social X: @robblackwellab and @nicholasadeleon Forums: r/truespotify and r/technology Threads: Joe Rosenthal / @joe_rosenthal : Never a better time to stop paying Spotify when they're giving Joe Rogan a quarter of a billion dollars to non-exclusively platform AIDS denialism and other dreck. Fabio Bracht / @fabiobracht : On your “Apple Music just doesn't ‘get me’ as well as Spotify does”, I totally agree with you. But hear me out: I started using Spotify two years before it was even available in the US, and over time I found that I should be the one responsible for picking what I want to listen to, be it old or new. … Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : I switched over from Spotify to Apple Music few years ago after seeing them over-pivoting to podcasts in terms of features they're working on, but what I really wanted is them focusing on the music consumption experience. Bluesky: Marty E. / @martye.bsky.social : They don't pay musicians jack shit for a royalty rate, either. [embedded post] X: Rob Blackwell / @robblackwellab : I continue to be puzzled why so many folks are on Spotify when both Amazon and Apple offer HD versions of songs at the same or lower cost. Nicholas De Leon / @nicholasadeleon : Great comments here. I ditched Spotify about a year ago for two reasons: the lack of lossless and the spammy (imo) mobile app. I was tired of being shown a pop up for some dumb celebrity podcast every time I opened the app. No thank you! https://www.theverge.com/... Forums: r/truespotify : Spotify HiFi is still MIA after three years, and now so is my subscription r/technology : Spotify HiFi is still MIA after three years, and now so is my subscription
Context & Ripple Effects
This report extends the unresolved gap documented a year earlier, when Spotify still had not delivered its announced lossless tier after two years of waiting. Reporting in the interim said Apple's no-extra-charge lossless offering undermined Spotify's planned paid HiFi tier, putting the delay in a pricing-strategy context rather than a purely technical one.
The story matters because audio quality had become a visible point of comparison among subscription music services, while Spotify had not converted its announcement into a customer-facing product.
First-order effects
- Spotify subscribers seeking higher-quality audio have no announced Spotify tier to switch to, extending the product gap for that segment.
- Spotify cannot use HiFi as the paid upgrade path it had originally signaled; the prior year's continued non-launch shows the delay was already persistent.
Second-order effects
- Apple Music gains a clearer feature-parity advantage among listeners who value lossless playback, increasing pressure on Spotify to match its pricing as well as its audio offering.
- A delayed premium tier narrows Spotify's room to segment subscribers by audio quality, making retention and upgrade strategy more dependent on benefits already available in its core service.
Third-order effects
- If lossless audio is broadly expected without an added fee, it becomes a baseline subscription feature rather than a durable source of tiered pricing power.
- The episode points to a wider subscription-growth gap: mature services may find that promised feature upgrades cannot support a higher price when rivals reset customer expectations first.
The trend: Music-streaming services are shifting from monetizing technical feature tiers toward competing over what subscribers treat as standard inclusion.