Your Spotify Premium subscription just got a huge audio upgrade at no extra cost

It’s been a long time coming. The saga of Spotify’s high-fidelity audio offering has felt like a tech industry myth at times, with the first rumors dating all the way back to 2017. A promised 2021 launch came and went, and even as recently as this summer, renewed rumors were met with a healthy dose of skepticism from a user base that had been burned before. Well, I’m happy to report that Spotify Lossless is finally here. For real this time. And the way they’re rolling it out is the best surprise of all.

For years, the widespread assumption was that lossless audio would be locked behind a new, more expensive subscription—a “Spotify HiFi” or “Music Pro” tier. In a fantastic, consumer-friendly move, that is not the case. Spotify has confirmed that lossless audio will be rolling out to all existing Premium subscribers at no additional cost. And the company will not be changing its prices as part of this feature launch either.

The rollout will be gradual, taking place over the next two months in over 50 markets. The first wave of users in countries like the US, UK, Germany, and Japan should start seeing it soon.

How it works (and what to expect)

Spotify is making the process simple. Subscribers will receive a notification in the app when lossless becomes available for their account. From there, you can head into the “Media Quality” settings to enable the new lossless option for Wi-Fi, cellular, or downloads.

When you’re listening to a lossless track, a new indicator will appear in your “Now Playing” bar and in the Connect Picker for compatible hardware. Initially, that includes devices from Sony, Bose, Samsung, and Sennheiser, with support for Sonos and Amazon expected to arrive next month.

How Spotify’s lossless stacks up

So, what kind of quality are we talking about? Spotify’s lossless offering will stream at up to 24-bit / 44.1 kHz in the FLAC format. This should result in a very nice bump in quality and detail over the standard compressed streams.

Now, for the demanding audiophiles out there, it’s worth noting that services like Apple Music and Tidal still offer higher-resolution tiers, going up to 24-bit / 192 kHz. Let’s be honest, though: for the vast majority of listeners using consumer-grade headphones and speakers, the difference will be practically imperceptible. Spotify is delivering a fantastic, high-quality experience that will be more than enough for almost everyone.

And it’s worth noting that this move officially leaves YouTube Music as the only major music streaming service that does not support lossless audio, and Google hasn’t given any indication that they are planning on adding this feature.

To be fair, YouTube Music does offer a “high” quality setting, but it tops out at just 256kbps AAC. Side note: You can access this setting by going to Settings > Download & Storage > Audio Quality.

While that’s perfectly fine for casual listening, it’s definitely a step down from the new lossless tier on Spotify and even lags behind Spotify’s standard 320kbps premium stream. The gap widens even further when you consider other premium features. YouTube Music also completely lacks support for Dolby Atmos or any other form of spatial audio, a feature that has become a major selling point for competitors like Apple Music.

For a company as large as Google, it’s perplexing to see its primary music service fall behind the industry standard on premium audio features. For now, if audio quality is a top priority for you, YouTube Music simply isn’t an option.