Spotify is preparing to launch a new subscription tier offering lossless CD-quality audio

[Shawn Knight]

Spotify is reportedly testing a new subscription tier called Spotify Hi-Fi that’ll afford lossless CD-quality audio for an additional fee.

The new offering, which appeared recently on Reddit and Twitter, is said to include all of the features of a Spotify Premium account in addition to lossless CD-quality audio. Some screenshots of the offer also mention discounts on limited-edition vinyl records and even a free record for signing up.

Spotify is reportedly asking for an additional $5, $7.50 or $10 per month for the upgrade (likely as part of a market test for pricing). When trying to sign up, however, some report that the service wasn’t available in their area or that they instead received an error message.

Offering a hi-fi listening option would further help Spotify differentiate itself from the sea of other streaming music outfits out there. What’s more, it’d give the company an additional source of revenue which may finally help push it into the land of profitability.

Not everyone would be interested in the offering but for those with higher-end headphones or audio systems that want to take full advantage of them, it may certainly be worth it.

When asked for comment, a Spotify spokesperson told The Verge that they are always testing new products and offers but have no news to share at this time.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/68358-spotify-preparing-launch-new-subscription-tier-offering-lossless.html

 

[alabama man]

Why stop at CD quality? They could make even higher tier for audiophiles, if I spend 10 000$+ on my audio setup I wan't something other to listen to than my own material and will gladly pay 40$ a month for that if it means I get up to 4 times the quality.

 

[oldikes]

Why stop at CD quality? They could make even higher tier for audiophiles, if I spend 10 000$+ on my audio setup I wan't something other to listen to than my own material and will gladly pay 40$ a month for that if it means I get up to 4 times the quality.

because getting higher quality than CDs is near impossible if not entirely so? even FLACs are taken off cds 99% of the time unless ive been horribly misinformed down the road somewhere...

 

[bluto 2050]

Why stop at CD quality? They could make even higher tier for audiophiles, if I spend 10 000$+ on my audio setup I wan't something other to listen to than my own material and will gladly pay 40$ a month for that if it means I get up to 4 times the quality.

Upsampling and hires recording beyond 16 bit playback of a good mix only makes a bigger file ,maybe a swindle on the other end and hires player and media sales opportunities


Upsampling usually adds distortion .

Quote >>> "They could make even higher tier for audiophiles,"

You mean audio fools ☺

I tell them feel free to ignore the science and your cognitive expectation bias you will have a lot of company there

If a hires mix sounds better than the same mix on a CD then what you had was an inferior CD mix and or uniform loudness compression on the CD mix resulting in a higher noise floor added thd+n and les dynamic range .

Sampling above 16 / 44.1 never improves audio quality on its own and spendy optical CD players are absurd an inexpensive HDD and not spent dac and something to play it with is way better than a $10.000 CDP and DAC and an exotic metal fool PCM data cable.

You can use a USB HDD and smart TV platform media player and optical for instance up to 24/96 2 ch for external decoding in a 5.1/7.1 HT AVR if you don't have a media player or PC to use and the spendy CDP/DAC and exotic metal data cable won't sound any better ,its PCM data it doesn't care it either works or not .

Quantizing /truncating 24 bit hires to 16 bits correctly will not degrade the audio playback from the original

The lower nyquist rate = 1/2 44.1 Khz sample rate for CD (RBCD) or 16 bit lossless and is 22.5 Khz which none of us can hear and any digital artifacts will be above the lower nyquist rate and inaudible on a good 16 bit mix .

A good CD or 16 bit mix that isn't squashed for uniform loudness or suicide loudness is all the human hearing needs .

We can't hear the 24 bit amplitude loudness step increments over 16 bit loudness steps of which there may be ~ 64,000 at 16 bits and thats how it really is .


OTOH there is good argument for mixing and tuning and and shaping at 24 bits and rendering it out at 16 bits for content delivery or media because at 16 bits you will compromise the sound doing much of anything including + dB software EQ at mixing or playback which adds thd +n vis a vis audio compression .

A lot of the digitized analog contact media and digital music production safety masters are at 24 bits at the labels and also Tidal hifi where they render down to 16 bits to stream it without any audio degradation and I expect Spotify sources it music from the labels like Tidal Hi Fi and the dog food will be the same on lossless Spotify .IOW wholly adequate for human ears .

I have some of that 24 bit stuff that didn't get to media specific POST mixing for a CD or club mix and it sounds great if it's a good mix and recording but that's not because of the 24 bit hires format it's because it didn't get squashed for uniform loudness in a commercial CD mix where mp3 comes from before it gets stepped on there .

The other hires argument at 2 ch. for hires if you can't get a good mix of a given production at 16 bits and thats what it is noting the best vinyl shakes out to maybe 775 mbps vs 1411 kbps on a CD or 16 bit mix and that includes the vinyl contact media noise above the noise floor that started in the late 18th century with recorded gramophone /phonograph contact media .

I was around back in vinyl days days and the real audiophiles seemed to be listening to reel to reel and 16 bit digital sampling is significantly oversampling magnetic tape below the lower nyquist rate frequency we can't hear anyway

OTOH the hires religion has ardent followers that maybe don't know any better and some that do taking advantage of ignorant masses and enthusiast illiterati and the business opportunities for the swindlers and HDWE folks or legitimate mixes not available at 16 bits where 2 ch hires really only legitimately fits in .

hires illiterati have no clue about audio codecs or mixing and what bit depth *actually represents in and audio file and it's not audible sound quality above 16 bits anyway

Similarly 4K blu rays may often be from 2K digital intermediates

 

[bluto 2050]

Why stop at CD quality? They could make even higher tier for audiophiles, if I spend 10 000$+ on my audio setup I wan't something other to listen to than my own material and will gladly pay 40$ a month for that if it means I get up to 4 times the quality.

Folks claiming preeminent companies like Philips NV and Sony inc. didn't think all this 16 bit RBCD and human hearing thing out to the nth degree are maybe delusional ,ignorant or dishonest and maybe making a case for a business opportunity beyond a given production or mix quality on hires that isn't legitimately available at 16 bits

.
Once they developed the optical readers and media the science was trivial at the time it was getting the CDP HDWE ,music industry ,CD replication industry and content ramped up at mass production scale that was the difficulty and the HDWE is trivial now and better in an inexpensive DVD/BD player or decent PC optical reader than it was in the spendy ones not that long ago especially on optical and HDMI .




SACD was a bust I have that too along with a spendy Sony ES player and DVD spinner/ carousel combo collecting dust out back in the little house sun room/day room

As long there is a market for the HDWE and content the audio manufactures and labels are more than happy to oblige but that doesn't validate the 2 ch. hires nonsense

 

[Raoul Duke]

Sorry @bluto 2050, you are spouting blanket generalizations, as are all of the hi-res Illuminati. The truth usually is somewhere inbetween. You speak truth and error.
It is true 'upsampling' a low-res file can not improve on the original
sorry folks, but vinyl doesn't cut it either for hi-res (as bluto 2050 points out)
"Moon dust" cables etc are also a bust, and total waste of money, BUT
for example an artist I enjoy records at 96/24, his CD's have to be reduced to 44.1/16 - 1411 bitrate. He has made his catalogue available on a USB stick or download at the native 96/24 - 4608 bitrate for his last release and 96/24 flac for the earlier releases. These plainly DO sound better.
By definition a reduction from 24 to 16 bits is a loss (although you qualify your statement with "done correctly" it isn't).
for most material unless you go back to the Masters, and yes, here you do have to "do it correctly" or the result will be no better or even worse than the CD that you can buy already, hi-res works.
I do think though that some people, I'll grant perhaps even the majority of the 'people on the street' can't hear a difference, but, for example, does a musician or a engineer (in music) hear and experience music the same way some 16-yr old does that has only heard music from a phone through ear-buds most of their life do? If they even listen to music at all. There is definitely a human factor at play here as well that works both ways, some hear, some can't. Not just all can't
Yes, lots and lots of snake oil peddlers out there willing to take your money for a cable made of 'unobtanium' or poor quality remasters, but lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater as they used to say.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Why stop at CD quality? They could make even higher tier for audiophiles, if I spend 10 000$+ on my audio setup I wan't something other to listen to than my own material and will gladly pay 40$ a month for that if it means I get up to 4 times the quality.

Unfortunately life doesn't work that way. There's the law of diminishing returns which can't be overcome.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Sorry @bluto 2050, you are spouting blanket generalizations, as are all of the hi-res Illuminati. The truth usually is somewhere inbetween. You speak truth and error.
It is true 'upsampling' a low-res file can not improve on the original
sorry folks, but vinyl doesn't cut it either for hi-res (as bluto 2050 points out)
"Moon dust" cables etc are also a bust, and total waste of money, BUT
for example an artist I enjoy records at 96/24, his CD's have to be reduced to 44.1/16 - 1411 bitrate. He has made his catalogue available on a USB stick or download at the native 96/24 - 4608 bitrate for his last release and 96/24 flac for the earlier releases. These plainly DO sound better.
By definition a reduction from 24 to 16 bits is a loss (although you qualify your statement with "done correctly" it isn't).
for most material unless you go back to the Masters, and yes, here you do have to "do it correctly" or the result will be no better or even worse than the CD that you can buy already, hi-res works.
I do think though that some people, I'll grant perhaps even the majority of the 'people on the street' can't hear a difference, but, for example, does a musician or a engineer (in music) hear and experience music the same way some 16-yr old does that has only heard music from a phone through ear-buds most of their life do? If they even listen to music at all. There is definitely a human factor at play here as well that works both ways, some hear, some can't. Not just all can't
Yes, lots and lots of snake oil peddlers out there willing to take your money for a cable made of 'unobtanium' or poor quality remasters, but lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater as they used to say.

Nice to see someone with some sense. The first poster seems to be a troll, the second is assuming FLAC files from pirate sites, and then Bluto just up and loses his mind. I honestly stopped reading after the first couple of sentences simply because it devolved into grammar-free ramblings.

In the professional studios, they nearly always record at a quality that is significantly higher than the intended end format is capable of. 96/24 is common, but it also isn't unheard of to bust out something like reel-to-reel magnetic tape for the master recording if that is what the artist is looking for. From there, quality only goes down. Whether it is from making a copy into a more-lossy format, or playing the file on an inferior setup, the quality only goes down.

Getting back on topic: most people lack the ears, hardware, and/or passion to appreciate higher quality music. This Spotify offering might make them more money at a $5 additional charge - that's low enough that people who can't actually appreciate the increased quality will sign up anyway for the bragging rights. But at $7.50 or $10 additional a month, and the only people they are going to get it are the ones who are at least convinced that they can appreciate the increase in quality (never mind if they actually can or not).

 

[SirDigby]

My main concern is what will happen to the 'Extreme' audio quality offering Spotify already offer on the paid subscription service, I think 240kbps?

I'm not an audiophile, I listen to music on £40 bluetooth headphones.

 

[mbrowne5061]

My main concern is what will happen to the 'Extreme' audio quality offering Spotify already offer on the paid subscription service, I think 240kbps?

I'm not an audiophile, I listen to music on £40 bluetooth headphones.

240kbps AAC is nice, but still pales to "CD Quality". There is more to audio quality than just bit rate. The bit rate is important, but it is equally important to the sample rates expressed as x-KHz/y-bit. "High-res" is 96KHz/24-bit. The first number is the analog representation of the sampling, and the second number is the digital representation. They are equivalent - or as much as a continuous sample can be equivalent to a discrete sample. 96KHz is considered "high res" because of the limits of what we are able to produce with our digital and analog electrical systems. To give you an idea of how much compression can hurt the total amount of information retained: a one-third reduction in bit-length, from 24 to 16, cuts the amount of analog information stored by more than half, from 96KHz to 44.1KHz.

44.1KHz/16-bit is what CDs are recorded at, and that translates into around 1,411kbps. This is significantly higher than the 240kbps already offered, so I doubt that Spotify will kill that option. If they did, people would complain that they were taking away a previously included feature just to put it behind a paywall.

No, I think the real story here is the "One free vinyl record" bit at the end. I doubt it is going to be just one album that they offer, and if this is an offer you get no matter when you sign up, Spotify might be getting into the physical media distribution business. They might be pondering sellng vinyls and other 'lossless' formats (magnetic tapes/cassette tapes) as an additional revenue stream.

 

[Phr3d]

My limited neurons from 1981-3 recall that the disc was somewhat forced diameter for the mechanicals of the playback device to be affordable (it was originally imagined as an Ultra-high audiophile-only device and disc) and that That forced the 16-bit, as it Must be able to offer the 1812 overture in its entirety. The disc and supporting player had more to do with the final agreed sampling than anything else. Compared to vinyl, it exceeded in every way, excepting that the compression favored and Disfavored certain frequency ranges -- why Karn Evil 9 is nearly scary on the vinyl version and with audiophile equipment, but is a kind of yawn in the digital/CD version (we don't need no steenking sub-50Hz signals!!!).

 

[mbrowne5061]

My limited neurons from 1981-3 recall that the disc was somewhat forced diameter for the mechanicals of the playback device to be affordable (it was originally imagined as an Ultra-high audiophile-only device and disc) and that That forced the 16-bit, as it Must be able to offer the 1812 overture in its entirety. The disc and supporting player had more to do with the final agreed sampling than anything else. Compared to vinyl, it exceeded in every way, excepting that the compression favored and Disfavored certain frequency ranges -- why Karn Evil 9 is nearly scary on the vinyl version and with audiophile equipment, but is a kind of yawn in the digital/CD version (we don't need no steenking sub-50Hz signals!!!).

The quality of 96/24 was decided based on what Sony engineers were able to accomplish with the technology available, and what most people were able to discern between "good" and "bad" quality recordings. The physical disc size was determined by the CEO of Sony wanting it to be able to hold the entirety of the 1812 Overture (and aforementioned quality determination). This is why there isn't much in the way of "compactness" about CDs, and why Sony later released Mini-Discs that had the same quality, but offered smaller sizes for much less storage space (MP3s had shown up on the scene by then, so our audio compression had improved).

 

[Phr3d]

.. The physical disc size was determined by the CEO of Sony wanting it to be able to hold the entirety of the 1812 Overture ..

You do intend to say that disc size was determined by 1812, and Not mechanicals, and what I stated/remembered is false? That (apparently) 16-bit was the immovable value (as opposed to whatever compression Might be needed to offer an undeliverable-to-consumers but sound engineer-consortium determined/concluded 96/24 master, a value used to this day.. hmm..), and that the 16-bit compression'd 1812 'decided' the CD disc diameter and weight? Recall that an 'enthusiant' CD player from Yamaha, cost Five.. Hundred.. dollars, MSRP.. less than half of the 'real', 'audiophile' editions - I still have mine (and it still worx after 34 years, hard to even imagine engineering of that level in our brilliant age of Walmart how cheap can you make it who cares about Anyone that does care how long it lasts).

Not a classic internet slam, I promise.. Humbly ask, how old were you in 1981, and what audiophile magazines did you consume, or what university-level sound engineering courses were you enrolled in? I use 'limited neurons' Often, as details are slowly going wherever it is that they go -- I get details wrong, and more often than is remotely comfortable.

"(MP3s had shown up on the scene by then, so our audio compression had improved)" check your sources, MP3 is Microsoft-early sound for their .avi video 'standard', Stolen, then sorta' kinda'.. given to public domain - its -adequate- performance(computer DAC-speakers-headphones) and underground acceptance-embrace led to Napster, a Bit (sorry) after the mini-disc.

 

[mbrowne5061]

You do intend to say that disc size was determined by 1812, and Not mechanicals, and what I stated/remembered is false? That (apparently) 16-bit was the immovable value (as opposed to whatever compression Might be needed to offer an undeliverable-to-consumers but sound engineer-consortium determined/concluded 96/24 master, a value used to this day.. hmm..), and that the 16-bit compression'd 1812 'decided' the CD disc diameter and weight? Recall that an 'enthusiant' CD player from Yamaha, cost Five.. Hundred.. dollars, MSRP.. less than half of the 'real', 'audiophile' editions - I still have mine (and it still worx after 34 years, hard to even imagine engineering of that level in our brilliant age of Walmart how cheap can you make it who cares about Anyone that does care how long it lasts).

Not a classic internet slam, I promise.. Humbly ask, how old were you in 1981, and what audiophile magazines did you consume, or what university-level sound engineering courses were you enrolled in? I use 'limited neurons' Often, as details are slowly going wherever it is that they go -- I get details wrong, and more often than is remotely comfortable.

"(MP3s had shown up on the scene by then, so our audio compression had improved)" check your sources, MP3 is Microsoft-early sound for their .avi video 'standard', Stolen, then sorta' kinda'.. given to public domain - its -adequate- performance(computer DAC-speakers-headphones) and underground acceptance-embrace led to Napster, a Bit (sorry) after the mini-disc.

I can't figure out where you're going with your point about prices. Most cost behind audio equipment has to do with the quality and number of components used. Audiophile/professional grade equipment is going to use lower-noise amplifiers and tighter-tolerance capacitors and resistors, and its going to be held to higher QC standards. I'll agree that older stereos (and electronics in general) hold up better than newer ones. Some of that is because we were working larger designs where it is easier to spot defects that will lead to failures, but a lot of it has to do with cost cutting.

But yes, I am saying that the audio encoding (96/24) was determined by engineers, and the Sony CEO wanting the entire 1812 overture on one disc determined the minimum size the disc physically needed to be.

I also can't understand why you choose to attack MP3s in this context; I made no claims about their origin, only that it had showed up and allowed music to become more portable byway of Mini-Disc players (and later, dedicated MP3 players). Even if you don't like that the dates don't perfectly lineup and only overlap, there were other digital compression formats that were used, and the point was that audio compression was catching on and it showed that people cared more about format size than they did about it's quality.

 

[Phr3d]

I can't figure out where you're going with your point about prices. Most cost behind audio equipment has to do with the quality and number of components used. Audiophile/professional grade equipment is going to use lower-noise amplifiers and tighter-tolerance capacitors and resistors, and its going to be held to higher QC standards. I'll agree that older stereos (and electronics in general) hold up better than newer ones. Some of that is because we were working larger designs where it is easier to spot defects that will lead to failures, but a lot of it has to do with cost cutting.

But yes, I am saying that the audio encoding (96/24) was determined by engineers, and the Sony CEO wanting the entire 1812 overture on one disc determined the minimum size the disc physically needed to be.

I also can't understand why you choose to attack MP3s in this context; I made no claims about their origin, only that it had showed up and allowed music to become more portable byway of Mini-Disc players (and later, dedicated MP3 players). Even if you don't like that the dates don't perfectly lineup and only overlap, there were other digital compression formats that were used, and the point was that audio compression was catching on and it showed that people cared more about format size than they did about it's quality.

are you sure you read what I wrote? Not the first time something seemed clear and inoffensive to ME, but was not clear to others (I don't usually offend, but whadyagondo).


DBS, where did ya' go? (Crank, Latin trans, if you read?)