Spotify is the largest music streaming platform we can find right now. It was one of the veterans and the one that best knew how to win over its users thanks to its free plan, and then gradually convinced them to pay for the “Premium” plan. This paid plan offers users a little more quality, as well as eliminating the platform’s advertising. However, for many years now there has been one feature that all users of the platform have missed: high definition music, or Hi-Fi.
While Spotify is enjoying historic results and a considerable increase in the number of Premium subscribers, its rivals, such as Apple Music or Tidal, are ahead of it by offering high-fidelity music. And, what’s more, they include it in their normal plan, without having to pay anything extra to enjoy this extra quality.
We’ve been hearing for a while that Spotify was working on its own plan for high-quality music, although we’ve never received any official information about it. Today, after the company’s results presentation, we’ve learned that this new plan is real. And, what’s more, high quality now has both a name and a price.
This is Spotify Deluxe
Although it is still in a very early phase and has no launch date, we can already learn many of the details of this new plan. Spotify Deluxe is going to be a new plan whose main purpose is to offer users the possibility of listening to audio in very high quality. We remember that, until now, the maximum playback quality is 320 Kbps. With Hi-Fi audio we will be able to listen to music with much more fidelity, although we do not know if it will be “Loseless” audio without losses.
What we don’t yet know is whether this high-quality audio will be available to all groups or, on the contrary, only to specific groups. In addition to the improved audio quality, Spotify Deluxe also promises to offer us improved controls, although we don’t know exactly what the company means by this feature.
Price
And finally, we come to the important part. Although it is not yet available to anyone, and there are still many details to be finalized (including the price), its executives assure that in the United States it will cost between 17 and 18 dollars a month, which means an increase of about 5 dollars a month in exchange for this high-quality music.
In Spain, when it arrives, the price increase will be similar. And, if we assume that the normal plan costs 10.99 euros per month, it is easy for this Deluxe plan to increase the price by another 5 euros, up to 15.99 euros per month. There is not that much difference in price compared to the United States, but is it worth it?
Apple Music, Spotify’s biggest rival, has been offering its own high-fidelity music for many years now. This is included in the “Standard” plan, which costs 10.99 euros per month. This is light years ahead of its rival, both in terms of catalogue and price.
It remains to be seen whether the new Spotify Deluxe will finally be released.