It’s been four years since Spotify announced that it would be bringing lossless audio to its streaming platform, and it’s finally, officially launched the service.
It won’t be a separate tier as it was first speculated it would be when announced; and that lossless audio will be made available across mobile, desktop, and tablet.
Goodbye 320kbps streaming
Spotify Lossless will support audio streams up to 24-bit/44.1kHz “across nearly every song available in Spotify”. Spotify Connect devices will also be able to support lossless audio, which includes Sony, Bose, Samsung, Sennheiser and others.
Support for devices such as Sonos and Amazon will arrive in October.
Lossless will not be automatically enabled, so Premium subscribers will need to delve into the settings to manually enable. You’ll be able to see which tracks are playing in lossless audio via the Now Playing view or the Connect Picker.
A word of warning though, like with other lossless services, you’ll get a truer performance when streamed over Wi-Fi. Bluetooth connections with headphones and wireless speaker won’t necessarily result in ‘true’ lossless audio, as most forms of Bluetooth codecs are a lossy (i.e. data is lost during transmission) rather than lossless.
There is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound which claims to be able to deliver lossless audio over a Bluetooth connection, though this relies on a headphone and a source (an Android mobile device) that supports aptX Lossless.
How much will Spotify Lossless cost?
It’ll be rolling out to Premium subscribers in select markets starting this week, and Premium users will receive a notification once Spotify Lossless becomes available to them.
As you might have guessed, Lossless audio is being rolled into the Premium tier, so you won’t have to pay anything extra for the priviledge of listenining in higher quality. Right now Spotify Premium costs £11.99/month and $11.99/month in the US.
