Spotify is still yet to raise its standard $9.99 per month individual subscription price in the US, despite widespread calls to do so from multiple music industry leaders.
But according to a new report, Daniel Ek‘s company is readying an entirely new, higher-priced subscription tier – including HiFi audio quality and expanded access to audiobooks.
That’s according to Bloomberg, which, citing people familiar with ‘the strategy’ reports that the new subscription plan is being referred to internally as the ‘Supremium’ tier.
The tier, according to the report, will be the platform’s ‘most expensive plan and likely offer a HiFi feature the company first announced it was working on in 2021’.
The article adds that the new tier will roll out in non-US markets first later this year.
Spotify first announced that it would be launching High-quality music streaming on its platform back at the start of 2021.
The company said at the time that HiFi audio was, “consistently one of the most requested new features by our users”.
Spotify announced the service at its Stream On event, with an announcement featuring Billie Eilish and brother Finneas. SPOT said at the time that the HiFi feature would “begin rolling out in select markets” later that year.
The feature didn’t and still hasn’t arrived, however.
In October 2022, reports arrived that the streaming giant was readying a new $19.99-per-month ‘Platinum’ tier that would include HiFi audio.
Most recently, according to Bloomberg’s article on Tuesday (June 20), the imminent launch of the new tier forms part of an effort from SPOT ‘to drive more revenue and placate investors who’ve been saying the company should raise its prices’.
Elsewhere in the music streaming business, in Q4 last year, Spotify rival Apple Music announced that it was upping its standard monthly subscription price from USD $9.99 to $10.99 in the US, and GBP £9.99 to £10.99 in the UK. It also increased the price of its Family Plan in both territories.
In January this year, Amazon Music made a similar move, confirming to customers that, like Apple, it would be raising its standard individual Amazon Music Unlimited monthly subscription price from $9.99 to $10.99 in the US, and from £9.99 to £10.99 in the UK.
Amazon Music also upped its Amazon Music Unlimited Student Plan from $/£4.99 to $/£5.99 per month in each respective territory.
Additionally, Amazon Music increased equivalent pricing in Germany and Japan.
(Those price rises were for non-Amazon Prime members. Amazon Music subscription prices for Prime members increased in May last year: In the US, Prime members who subscribed to an individual Amazon Music Unlimited account started paying $8.99 per month rather than $7.99 per month, or $89 rather than $79 per year. There was also a bump in the price of the standard Amazon Music Family Plan in 2022, which rose from $14.99 monthly in the States to $15.99.)
The potential imminent arrival of high-fidelity audio on Spotify would bring the platform in line with competitors that offer higher-definition listening options.
Spotify users, however, according to Bloomberg’s report, will be required to pay for it, whereas rival services including Apple Music and Amazon Music added HiFi listening to their standard premium plans for free.
In May 2021, Spotify rival Apple Music rolled out Lossless Audio and Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos to its service for free.
That same month, Amazon Music also launched HD music listening options for its $9.99-per-month Music Unlimited Service “at No Extra Cost.”
TIDAL Hi-FI subscription tier costs $9.99 per month and offers CD-quality lossless streams at 44.1 kHz / 16 bit. The platform’s Hi-FI Plus subscription tier costs $19.99 per month and offers Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio, and HiFi.
Deezer, meanwhile, offers HiFi as a standard for all Premium subscribers at 10.99, which, like TIDAL’s equivalent, streams music at 44.1 kHz / 16-bit via FLAC files.Music Business Worldwide
