Spotify could always offer a second app, maybe one called Spotify Old, with a less hyperkinetic interface. Even if the company were to add those features to the Spotify Premium tier at no extra cost – something that at this point they would need to do following Apple Music and Amazon’s moves – the new overstuffed, and overstimulating, app is something of a non-starter for music fans simply looking to access a high-quality digital music collection. I’m sure that there are plenty of Spotify users who enjoy using it and also appreciate the stream of sometimes random-seeming content that flows to them as they scroll vertically through the app’s interface.īut I imagine that, like me, many listeners who value Lossless, High-Res, and Spatial Audio are likely to be put off by the changes. This revamped Spotify perfectly encapsulates the company’s ambitions to be everything everywhere all at once when it comes to audio streaming. The company most likely awakened to the reality of what they needed to do following a third-quarter operating loss, and subsequent stock value plummet, in 2022, and thus the new app. The company is aggressively catering to an audience craving an abundance of content and wants it fed to them in a manner that syncs up with current social media formats. Let’s be realistic, there is no longer a world in which a Spotify HiFi tier makes sense anymore. Hey, Spotify, how did AC/DC get in my electronic music feed? (Image credit: Future) Making sense for us and for our listeners That may have made sense when the company first announced its HiFi plans, but since then Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited have both made Lossless, High-Res Lossless, and Spatial Audio part of their standard $10.99 / £10.99 / AU$11.99 per month subscription. Yes, it’s true: Spotify’s plans for its HiFi tier had involved a price increase over the basic $9.99 per month Premium subscription. But that audience doesn’t necessarily care about Lossless audio (HiFi) and they’re certainly not going to pay more for it. And it means that Spotify is dead-serious about catering to a very specific audience. The new Spotify’s vertical-scrolling navigation and free-flowing video reels certainly signal an adaptation – over-adaptation, in my opinion. The industry changed and we had to adapt.” In a TheVerge Decoder podcast interview with Söderström cited in the article linked to above, here’s what the company’s co-president said of the supposedly forthcoming HiFi tier: “We are going to do it, but we’re going to do it in a way where it makes sense for us and for our listeners. Instead, we got SpoTik-Tok, which is not surprising.
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