Elusive Spotify Lossless Option May Arrive as Paid ‘Music Pro’ Add-on

Spotify’s elusive lossless music experience is being teased again, this time based on code uncovered by The Verge in recent builds of the Spotify app for Android.

More than three years have elapsed since Spotify announced its intention to offer a “HiFi” premium option that would give users access to a catalog of CD-quality music tracks. Originally the company said the tier would go live by the end of 2021, but a shift in the wider streaming market upended that idea.

Apple Music has since rolled lossless listening into its standard subscription price, while Amazon stopped charging extra for its lossless music library. The moves effectively kiboshed Spotify’s original strategy of marketing an exclusively lossless HiFi tier.

That said, it doesn’t sound as if lossless is coming as a free perk. The latest rumors suggest that Spotify now aims to offer lossless audio playback in an optional “Music Pro” add-on that will also include new DJ remix features, which let subscribers “speed up, mash-up, and otherwise edit” tracks from their favorite artists, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Spotify will reportedly make basic versions of these remixing tools available as part of its Premium subscription (currently $10.99 a month, or $5.99 for students). Meanwhile, the more expansive offering will be part of a “Supremium” tier that will include its long-delayed lossless audio feature.

How much the “Supremium” tier will cost is unknown. Similarly, the intended price of the lossless “Music Pro” add-on for premium subscribers has not been revealed, but given that major rivals include lossless in their standard plans, asking users to pay anything more than a nominal fee in unlikely to go down well.