It's pretty much been rumoured to launch for years, let's see if it finally happens. I'll be sticking with Apple Music either way.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Spotify Rumored to Launch HiFi Audio as Part of New Top-Tier 'Supremium' Subscription Plan
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Late to the game and they still did it wrong. Hi-fi audio is lossless, but Loser Spotify definitely isn’t. L!!
IDK what it is, but I've Tried Spotify, Tidal, AMazon Music. And I always end up coming back to Apple Music. Those other services apps just suck for me. And the audio quality is hit or miss to me. Where as Apple Music seems way more consistent. And I can't really quantify it with some metric. It's just a feeling of listening and feel with the app user face.
Profit this month at ANY EXPENSE, especially at the expense of the future!
Michael Dell had to buy back his company to keep this from driving Dell into the ground.
I'd love to take the time to study how much audio quality is actually sent to headphones, especially bluetooth wireless headphones. Always figured to benefit from this lossless stuff one had to have wired.
I just recently found out the Apple Watch streams audio to my AirPods at 64 kbps and I couldn't tell the difference (but I was focused on waddling instead of listening when I do listen to music on my AW).
Edit: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183 - Yeah need wired. AirPods seem limited to 256 kbps AAC.
Last edited:
Unless you're an audio engineer who needs the extra headroom, if you're willing to pay extra for lossless 192khz over lossless 96khz then please message me cos I've got a collection of bridges to sell you.
Years too late and for a premium when competing services offer it for free. Classic Spotify, they‘re there for the customers after all, trying to free the industry from the hostile practices of Apple Inc.
To me lossless just means non compressed. MP3 compression isn’t as good as AAC compression, so Apple Music already sounded a little better. You can actually tell when you pay attention to things like the crash cymbal drums in music cause those are hard to compress, data wise. A lot of Apple’s lossless files will just be the original CD quality audio that the musicians submitted years ago. But that’s already a lot nicer than AAC and MP3. And yeah it gets a little better after that I suppose but it’s really hard to tell. If you can tell the difference between 96khz and 192khz your ears are better than mine.
Spotify should register "Supermium" as trademark as soon as possible. Now "Extremium" is owned by 3M.
If it is actually lossless then there is no accentuation for highs or lows. That can only be done AFTER the music is converted back to audio. A lossless audio stream is exactly as the CD was recorded.
If you are doing an A/B compare the you are comparing the playback software or the speakers or headphones.
And until they stop driving dump trucks full of cash up to certain podcasters' homes.
I would go so far as to say that there is not a human alive that can tell the difference.
And I am yet to meet anybody that can tell the difference between 320kbps mp3 and lossless. Spotify claim to be streaming 320kbps, but there was a scandal at one point where they were caught upscaling 160kbps files to 320.
I could be mistaken, but I think the Na’vi are going to be shown listening to ‘superium’ in one of James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar sequels, with angry human music execs invading Pandora to launch a variety of copyright infringement lawsuits against the indigenous people.
Well, it’s hard to expand something that turned into a disposable product like music and movies.
I’m glad to see them get it. Spotify is Apple’s only true competitor in the space, and apple has shown time and time again that without competition they just let their products stagnate. The horse race might be fun, but it’s better for us as consumers to have Spotify continue to be a strong competitor.
I understand why people love Spotify, but it’s shocking to A/B Spotify tracks with Apple Music’s, especially with headphones. Spotify sound heavily compressed. I doubt most would care, but it’s interesting just how differentthey sound.
I have a family Apple Music plan, and while I don’t use it much personally, Spotify bothers me. No streaming service pays artists enough, but a friend with 10M streams got a check for $4400. They’ve punished artists who’ve released exclusive content with other platforms, and Phil Ek… Just search for any of his comments and see for yourself.
I get it. Music streaming is Spotify’s only business. Apple Music breaks even or maybe at a loss, but they make hardware. But have some dignity and pay your artists.
I have a family Apple Music plan, and while I don’t use it much personally, Spotify bothers me. No streaming service pays artists enough, but a friend with 10M streams got a check for $4400. They’ve punished artists who’ve released exclusive content with other platforms, and Phil Ek… Just search for any of his comments and see for yourself.
I get it. Music streaming is Spotify’s only business. Apple Music breaks even or maybe at a loss, but they make hardware. But have some dignity and pay your artists.
So, they're trying to upcharge for what Apple, Amazon, and others do with a regular subscription? Good luck with that. Watch, they'll whine and cry and try to somehow blame Apple and say "Apple isn't fair!". lol.
You're only going to reliably get 320Kbps from Spotify if you're a paying customer using a dedicated app with the quality setting on Very High and auto-adjust disabled. They have a whole matrix of audio quality determinations: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/
TIDAL recently announced it would be serving more music in the FLAC lossless format for the paid tiers: https://www.whathifi.com/news/tidal-is-introducing-hi-res-flac-to-its-hifi-plus-subscription-tier
I use a combination of Apple Music and TIDAL for all my music listening, depending on which device I'm using and thus which speakers I have hooked up. I haven't noticed too much of a difference between them, but I can hear the difference compared to Spotify. There is clarity lost in those more compressed formats. Whether it matters to you or not is a personal preference.
They could add something similar to iTunes Match (I think it's called) so my personal music library is matched in my Spotify library. Between that and lossless, it's two big benefits to Apple Music. Spotify wins on playlists, though, and is the main reason I mostly use Spotify.
Yet Netflix charges more for better quality and people pay.
Spotify has 5X the user base, so actually, artists make more on Spotify.
First of all, there is no streaming service I know of which charges more based on one hi-res sampling rate over another. Second of all, you’re responding to a commenter that apparently doesn’t even understand the definition of “lossless”
Ugh I would rather just have better quality music and not their “selection” of “audiobooks.”
I guess as a one trick pony they are trying to diversify, but I’d rather they just be really good at their one thing.
I guess as a one trick pony they are trying to diversify, but I’d rather they just be really good at their one thing.