Spotify Tests Groovy Lossless Hi-Fi Music Tier With Select Audiophiles

If you're an audiophile or someone who would simply prefer listening to the highest-quality version of a song or album possible, then Spotify's plans to offer a lossless subscription option should get you excited. That is, as long as you're willing to pay a bit more for the luxury.

Starting this week, some of Spotify's customers have been receiving a prompt offering them a service upgrade, with premiums over the current subscription being $5 to $10. In some cases, people are offered nothing more than an upgrade to lossless audio (in addition to their preexisting premium subscription), while others get offers for a free vinyl as well as discounts on "limited edition" vinyl.

If you're someone who only uses earbuds to listen to music, there might not be a huge draw to lossless audio, but if you have a good set of cans, it could be hard to pass up replacing 320Kbps music with a version that can exceed 1,000Kbps (1Mbps).

That said, lossless audio does have an inherent caveat: it requires a lot more space. That's not going to be a problem on the desktop, but it could on mobile when you either download the entire track (around 20MB to 40MB on average), or even stream it over a connection with limited bandwidth. Those who buy into the lossless audio subscription are probably going to be a slightly niche audience, at least at first.

Let's hope Spotify issues official word on this new subscription soon. The premiums these subscriptions carry could finally help put Spotify on a road to financial success, so it's almost no surprise that the company is planning this move.