Stop us if you've heard this before: Spotify HiFi is coming! Spotify said it was coming in 2021, and then in 2022 it said "we're excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users in the future". And now it's nearly 2024, and Spotify HiFi is absolutely definitely coming any day now.
It's easy to be cynical, but this time around it looks like there's meat on the bones of the Spotify HiFi story. According to Hypixely on the r/truespotify subreddit, who says they've been "digging within the Spotify app", there are references in the app's code to a new, more expensive "Supremium" service. The price appears to be $19.99 a month, although that may just be a placeholder, and there appear to be Duo and Family subscriptions for couples and family groups respectively.
Is Spotify Supremium the same as Spotify HiFi?
It appears to be. According to the poster, the new plan includes 24-bit lossless music; AI-based playlists; 30 hours of bundled audiobooks per month; library filtering by mood, activity and genre; advanced mixing tools including BPM and "danceability"-based playlists, smooth transitions and a feature called Soundcheck that analyses your listening habits and tells you what mix of songs is "uniquely you".
The code certainly matches up with previous reports: Spotify surveyed users last year about a possible $19.99 tier, and earlier this year Bloomberg reported the name change to "Supremium".
The reason the higher quality tier has taken so long is reportedly due to negotiations with the record labels: in 2022 Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that the service was the subject of "constant dialogue" with rights owners.
Spotify isn't commenting beyond the usual "we don't comment" kind of comment, but if there's this much detail already in the app then it does look like Spotify Supremium is coming sooner rather than later. It's been a long time coming, and it'll be interesting to see whether the lure of higher quality music proves popular: while Spotify is joining Apple Music and Amazon Music in offering lossless music streaming, those rival services don't charge extra for it.
