Spotify has been promising this for a long time. Too much time. The greatest service of stream musical confirmed that one of its plans was to launch a quality modality for its subscribers, but we’ve waited more than two years for nothing to be seen.
And it’s not as if Spotify has climbed to its laurels: the job would’ve already been done, and what happened is a change of plans. A reversal, of course, caused by Apple and his strategy that if you understand you understand the reason for this long wait.
“Premium” audio without the “Premium” price
A few years ago, the only service from stream of music that had a “Hi-Fi” mode was Tidal. and this modality It had a price that doubled the standard plan: almost €20 per month. It was the sacrifice that had to be made if we didn’t want audio loss.
It made sense: sending that quality of audio means using more bandwidth, which requires extra effort from the servers. According to an interview The Verge gave to Spotify Vice Chairman Gustav Söderström, such a plan for the service has been drawn up and is underway. They’ve been ready to release it for over a year.
The plans were dashed by Apple Music, whose pricing thwarted the previous strategy
But ah, then what we already knew happened happened: Apple started offering the quality lossless with spatial audio and Dolby Atmos in Apple Music’s own default mode. Without paying more, without that being extra. High quality for anyone who had headphones that could play it like the AirPods Pro 2.
That ruined Spotify’s plans. Söderstrom insists in the interview that the intention is still to launch a high-quality special subscription that will cost more, but he now has to fight against the Apple Music subscription, which costs 10.99 euros per month. It won’t be easy, which is why Söderström does not give any release dates. What it says is that We’ll see it either way “that works at the cost level”. There is little room for doubt.
While we wait, Spotify also needs to keep an eye on user reaction to the new “Tiktokized” interface they’re hoping to launch. At the moment the first opinions are not very good due to the randomness of the content and the imitation of social networks, although for my part I prefer to wait until I’ve tried the new experience to make my judgment.
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Source : www.applesfera.com