Now that Spotify has joined the lossless audio club, the pressure is on for such lossy-only competitors such as Apple Music, Napster, Pandora, and YouTube Music to step up their game. Of course, it’s debatable whether the human ear can tell the difference beyond a certain point-but most people can discern the difference between CD-quality and lossy music streams. While CD-quality music files are encoded with 16-bit resolution and 44.1kHz sampling rates, high-resolution audio is generally considered to be tracks encoded with 24-bit resolution and 48kHz sampling rates or higher. Word of Spotify’s new HiFi tier is welcome news for those who’ve wanted higher-quality audio from the streaming service, but in terms of sheer audio quality, it still falls short of the high-resolution streams offered by the likes of Amazon Music HD, Tidal, and Qobuz. Amazon Music HD, Deezer, and Qobuz charge $15 a month for their hi-fidelity music streams, while Tidal charges $20 a month. Now that Spotify is bowing a high-quality audio tier, it will join a select group of streaming services such as Amazon Music HD, Tidal, Deezer, and Qobuz, all of which offer CD-or-better audio streaming. In its announcement, Spotify added that its HiFi streams will also be compatible with Spotify Connect-enabled speakers, and that it will be “working with some of the world’s biggest speaker manufacturers to make Spotify HiFi accessible to as many fans as possible.” Spotify currently charges $10 a month for individuals or $15 for families.

Spotify has yet to say how much it’ll charge for its new Spotify HiFi tier, although during one of Spotify’s tests back in 2017, the company charged an additional $7.50 per month for CD-quality audio.

Spotify hifi tier coming later