Spotify Lossless HiFi Audio Streaming Spotted in App As Launch Nears

BY Sanuj Bhatia

Published 18 May 2021

spotify lossless hifi audio streaming iphone

After nearly three years of its first appearance, Spotify’s lossless HiFi audio streaming service has again been spotted in the Spotify app for iPhone. The new HiFi audio menu has been accessed by Spotify Premium users, thanks to a glitch in the Spotify app.

Apple dropped a bomb in the music streaming service industry yesterday as the company announced the Apple Music Lossless audio streaming. The HiFi audio service is available for free for all Apple Music subscribers, regardless of the plan they’re on. Just a few hours later after the announcement, Amazon also started providing Amazon Music HD to all Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers for free.

Spotify has also been known to be working on bringing lossless audio streaming into the app for quite some time now. The first evidence in the app was spotted back in 2017 when the Spotify HiFi feature started popping up for some users. Now, a Reddit user u/themonarc has been able to launch Spotify’s HiFi menu by exploiting the app’s glitch.

The user says that he was able to launch the HiFi menu “by quickly tapping the glitched icon upon app launch.” Upon tapping the glitched HiFi icon, Spotify’s explainer of the HiFi audio streaming comes up. The cards explain what lossless music streaming is, and how it works.

I successfully opened the “HiFi” menu by quickly tapping the glitched icon upon app launch. Here are some screenshots! from truespotify

According to the ‘cards,’ Spotify’s HiFi audio streaming service will support 16-bit 44.1kHz streaming via wired earphones. However, just like Apple AirPods Max does not support Apple Music Lossless audio streaming, Spotify’s HiFi music streaming will also be limited over Bluetooth.

The user was able to get to the HiFi audio streaming menu while listening to Taylor Swift’s Love Story song. Though it appears that the song was not streaming in the HiFi audio quality as the circle next to the HiFi icon appeared grayed out.

There’s no word on whether the Spotify HiFi audio will be available free for all Spotify Premium subscribers or not. The user u/themonarc was not subscribed to a different Spotify HiFi audio plan. With Apple Music and Amazon free-ing up their lossless streaming service, it appears that Spotify will also have to go with the ‘free’ way.

Are you looking forward to Spotify’s Lossless HiFi audio streaming service? What’s your take on the whole lossless music streaming? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!