Elusive Spotify Lossless Option May Arrive as Paid 'Music Pro' Add-on
Spotify's elusive lossless music experience is being teased again, this time based on code uncovered by The Verge in recent builds of the Spotify app for Android.
More than three years have elapsed since Spotify announced its intention to offer a "HiFi" premium option that would give users access to a catalog of CD-quality music tracks. Originally the company said the tier would go live by the end of 2021, but a shift in the wider streaming market upended that idea.
Apple Music has since rolled lossless listening into its standard subscription price, while Amazon stopped charging extra for its lossless music library. The moves effectively kiboshed Spotify's original strategy of marketing an exclusively lossless HiFi tier.
That said, it doesn't sound as if lossless is coming as a free perk. The latest rumors suggest that Spotify now aims to offer lossless audio playback in an optional "Music Pro" add-on that will also include new DJ remix features, which let subscribers "speed up, mash-up, and otherwise edit" tracks from their favorite artists, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Spotify will likely make some basic remixing tools available as part of its Premium subscription (currently $10.99 a month, or $5.99 for students), but more powerful tools will be part of its "Music Pro" add-on. Where recent rumors of a new top "Supremium" tier fit in is unclear.
The intended price of the premium add-on has not been revealed, but given that major rivals include lossless in their standard plans, expecting subscribers to pay anything more than a nominal fee may be a big ask.
Popular Stories
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by
Juli CloverApple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by
Juli CloverElevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag.
Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro.
The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie.
The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup.
The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
