Spotify is doing very well as a streaming service. That it has bet so heavily on podcasts in recent years was probably a good idea in the end. What it has fallen behind in, however, is the music quality. Where Apple is fully experimenting with its spatial audio and other options to listen to music the way you like it, Spotify has been pretty much the same for years. Many users have been nagging for hi-fi sound for years, sound that sounds more like the artist intended. According to Spotify’s co-president, it will. When? On a certain moment.
High fidelity audio on Spotify
You may be wondering what’s newsworthy about this. Not much in itself, but it’s about time we put Spotify to the test a bit more. It’s no time to sit back and relax because everything is in and out. People are having an increasingly difficult financial time: one of the things that will be cut back is perhaps that streaming service subscription. Time for action, right?
Spotify itself also sees that it is now being overtaken by the competition in terms of sound. That doesn’t look good, but at the same time it doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything about it. That’s because it wants to do it its own way. Now you can call that arrogant, but on the other hand it might also be smart. So far, Spotify has had many successes precisely because it chose its own path. On the other hand, it is something that generally involves little creativity. The sound just needs to be better. Point.
She is ahead of the competition
Spotify announced two years ago that it was coming with hi-fi, but we haven’t heard from it since. In return for TheVerge However, co-president of Spotify Gustav Söderström says that some kind of lossless audio is on the way for the Scandinavian streaming service. However, Söderström believes that the industry suddenly changed enormously after their announcement. How he means that, however, he is vague about. He says: “We want to do it in a way that also works for us from a cost perspective. I can’t comment on the agreements we have with music labels or what the competition is doing.”
It is a pity that Spotify is so vague about it, but yes, it has been listed on the stock exchange since 2018 and therefore has to be very careful with what it does and does not say. Moreover, it seems clear from Söderström’s answers that Spotify knows very well that it really needs to do something about the sound quality of the music on the service. High fidelity music has been available for years on other streaming services and with the power that Spotify has, it should be a bit more firm in its shoes as far as we are concerned. Technically it would even be almost ready, but it is probably mainly a political game that means it is not there yet. Spotify wants to make it part of its Premium subscription, while the competition offers it for free. That’s probably what the co-president is referring to when he says the industry has changed.
