Spotify HiFi

spotify really has minimal incentive to implement lossless streaming... the audiophile market is a microbe on a pimple on the tail of an elephant to the company and its business

@jjss49 ,

I go with the Andy Grove mantra, "only the paranoid survive". The barriers to entry to start a streaming service are severe. The barriers to a customer changing a streaming service are not. ATMOS and others technologies may also force their hand.

Still waiting for Spotify, but saw the following from Reddit. Whether this is true, who knows, but I'll continue to be hopeful...

Important to note that changing the quality of the music at any price point changes their deals with international publishing rights organizations and labels. This is a VERY long and intensive process (it’s what I do for a living at another smaller DSP) and while I was really hoping for HiFi this year, my best guess is that Apple / Tidal / Amazon’s new models really messed with the deals that they had in place in the sense that they no longer made financial sense. Likely that they had to go back and renegotiate all the deals based on whatever subscription fees they opted to change with regard to lossless since it affects their royalty payments.

That being said, I think I have mentioned this before, I have SEEN Spotify HiFi in actual operation. Employees at the company have it enabled in beta and have for a long time. Which lends more to my theory that it’s not a technology / product issue and more of a finance / publishing issue.

Food for thought.

Based on the recent news from Spotify, it seems like a licensing issue.

Based on this alone, my guess is 2 things will be cleared in 1 day:

1. Spotify HiFi

2. Tidal Desktop Connect control through mobile devices

Why? Because Spotify already have Connect control for desktop, while Tidal already has hifi, but not Desktop Connect. It looks like with "Connect", there are some temporary file downloads that happen and I think when CD resolution files are downloaded, it becomes an issue with the content providers. Piracy most likely is the concern, because there are third party tools (I believe) that have capability to convert Tidal/Spotify songs to FLACs, etc.