Spotify is the only major music streaming platform that doesn’t offer some sort of hi-fi listening option. It announced last year that it would soon offer “Spotify HiFi,” but it ultimately failed to ship. Now, it seems that the company could offer a totally separate tier under the name “Platinum” for people who want higher-quality audio.
A Redditor posted a screenshot of a survey they were asked to take to see if Spotify could convince them to resubscribe. The survey listed both of Spotify’s existing plans, Free and Premium, as well as a third Platinum option that offers features like hi-fi streaming, “Studio Sound,” “Headphone Tuner,” “Library Pro,” and more. That tier is obviously not available yet, so it was pretty curious to see it show up in this prompt.
The Verge spoke with the Redditor who said that there were a few different versions of the Platinum plan listed, one of which offered audiobooks as a perk for subscribing.
We could talk about all of those rumored features that would theoretically be a part of the Platinum plan (I really hope “Library Pro” means better local files support), but the clear stand-out is hi-fi. Both Apple and Amazon offer lossless audio quality on their standard premium tiers, which makes it a bit odd that Spotify has to offer theirs as a separate package.
It’s also reportedly twice the price of regular Spotify, at $19.99 per month. Spotify will absolutely have to fluff up its Platinum option to make it seem worth upgrading to, especially if it plans to pull subscribers from Apple and Amazon who are happy to give customers hi-fi essentially for free.
It remains unclear how Spotify plans to roll out hi-fi listening (and when, for that matter), but it doesn’t look like it’ll be much longer until we find out.
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