Spotify Finally Delivers Lossless Audio: Premium Subscribers Get CD-Quality Sound at No Extra Cost

A Long-Awaited Arrival

Spotify’s high-fidelity listening feature has been a long time coming, having first been announced in February 2021 at the company’s Stream On event and promoted by Billie Eilish and Finneas. Originally, the plan was to roll out high-fidelity audio in select markets that year, but it never materialized.

The New Lossless Experience

With the new Lossless feature, users can now stream tracks in up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC, unlocking greater detail across nearly every song available on Spotify, allowing listeners to enjoy new releases and favorite tracks in the highest quality while being immersed in the music.

Users will need to enable lossless audio manually on each device. Once activated, a Lossless indicator will appear in the Now Playing view or bar, and via the Connect Picker.

Availability and Requirements

To experience lossless audio, users will need to use Spotify Connect or wired headphones (analog or USB). Many devices with Spotify Connect already support lossless from brands such as Sony, Samsung, Bose, and Sennheiser, with additional devices from Sonos and Amazon adding support next month. Bluetooth is explicitly not supported due to bandwidth limitations that require signal compression.

Market Rollout

Lossless is rolling out gradually to more than 50 markets through October. Premium subscribers in the U.S. have already started to get access, along with those in Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, and the U.K.

Competitive Edge

This move puts Spotify in direct competition with other music services, as Apple Music introduced lossless audio in May 2021, while Amazon Music did so in 2019. Other music services like Tidal also offer lossless HD audio.

The launch is part of Spotify’s commitment to continually improve its Premium service. This highly requested feature takes the Premium experience to the next level, joining other popular features like DJ, Jam, AI Playlist, brand-new Mix, and daylist, as well as playlists curated by their leading global music editorial team.