Spotify Finally Supports Lossless Audio
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It’s official: Spotify finally supports lossless audio. The company made the announcement in a blog post on Wednesday , saying the high-quality audio option will be available to Premium subscribers in “select regions.”
This means that if you live in one of these regions and pay for Spotify, you’ll be able to enjoy music in FLAC format at up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz. That’s a big step up from Spotify Premium, which previously supported up to 320 kbps in apps and only 256 kbps on the web.
How to Take Advantage of Lossless Audio
This change means a better listening experience for you if you have quality headphones or speakers. Audio with a bit rate of 320 kbps sounds good enough, but it is compressed, meaning that it loses audio data in order to save storage or streaming space. Lossless audio, on the other hand, preserves all of the original audio data while compressing, so with the right equipment, you can hear more detail in your music than before.
That doesn’t mean other quality configurations are going away. The 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC format is likely to consume a lot of data, whether you’re streaming or downloading lossless files. Spotify isn’t disclosing the sizes of these files yet, so we can’t say for sure how much they’ll differ. But if you have a limited cellular plan or a device with limited storage, streaming or downloading in lossless mode may not be possible.
Either way, you may not notice a difference, especially if you typically use Bluetooth headphones or speakers. Bluetooth is convenient, but the technology is limited in terms of audio quality: it supports high-quality audio playback, but it’s not lossless, so anything above 320 kbps will likely be compressed before it reaches your ears. That’s why Spotify recommends using wired audio outputs to play lossless tracks.
It’s not entirely clear why Spotify took so long to implement this feature. The company announced it back in February 2021 , while other streaming services, notably Tidal and Apple Music, picked up on the idea several years ago.
Spotify plans to launch lossless audio in over 50 markets, but is starting with the following: Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, US, and UK.
How to Losslessly Stream Music on Spotify
Spotify says you’ll need to manually enable lossless compression on each device you listen to music on. Once the feature is available, you’ll need to do the following:
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Open Spotify, then tap your profile in the top left corner.
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Go to Settings & privacy > Media quality .
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Here select Lossless .
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You can also choose how you want to access your data without loss, including via cellular, file downloads, or Wi-Fi.