Reports: Spotify Will Finally Add High Quality Audio to Service in 2025

Four years ago, Spotify announced that it would add a lossless audio tier to its streaming music service at an additional monthly cost. At the time, lossless audio was a rarity, with only Tidal and Amazon Music HD, plus a few truly nice services, offering this option.

But Spotify was quickly embarrassed when Apple announced that it would add spatial and lossless audio capabilities to Apple Music for free, and then launched those new capabilities just a few weeks later. Amazon responded by making lossless available to Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers for no additional cost. But the months ticked by. And then the years. And Spotify HiFi, as it was initially called, never appeared.

It doesn’t seem to have hurt the company much: Spotify recently announced that it contributed a record $10 billion to the music industry in 2024 and had effectively saved it from extinction. And it just posted its first annual profit, with its service now racking up an incredible 675 million monthly active users (MAUs). But Spotify is lacking in several ways compared to its biggest competitor, Apple Music–I’m looking at you, ripped CD music–and audio quality is, of course, right up there with total catalog size, personalized audio mixes, and cost when customers evaluate the available services.

A new report in Bloomberg claims that Spotify now plans to ship the renamed Music Pro tier in 2025. This will be a paid monthly add-on for Spotify’s paid subscription plans that will provide “super fans” with higher-quality audio, remixing tools, and access to concert tickets. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek recently mentioned a coming premium tier for “super fans of music.

“The next version of the music industry, I believe, is one where we’re going to tailor the Spotify experience to all of these different subgroups,” Ek said during an earnings conference call. “We’re sort of moving from this one size fits all to this much more sort of specialized tier as the base of consumers is growing into the hundreds of millions.”

Bloomberg doesn’t say whether the higher-quality audio capabilities will include both spatial and lossless audio, but it’s difficult to imagine it being otherwise. Spotify is apparently still wrestling with the timing and cost, but it will vary by locale and could cost as much as $5.99 per month. Spotify is apparently still negotiating rights with some music publishers, which is rather astonishing given that it’s four years later. But Bloomberg suggests that the additional cost and its recent price hikes may be an attempt by Spotify to satisfy music publishers demanding higher revenues from streaming. (Spotify is worth $130 billion by market cap, more than the combined worth of all three major music publishers.)

The other features in Music Pro are less interesting (to me, at least). The remixing tool is apparently similar to something Tidal offers, and it will use AI to help users “mix together songs from different artists.” The final feature is still in flux, but Spotify is hoping to give fans access to concert ticket presales or better seats, Bloomberg says.

The Financial Times has confirmed the Bloomberg report, adding that the “super-premium” new subscription will cost an extra $6 per month, or a total of $18 per month for individuals. Both publications state that Music Pro will roll out “later this year,” with FT adding on source believes it won’t be until the second half of 2025. The holdup is ongoing negotiations with Sony Music. It signed new multiyear deals with Universal Music and Warner Music in late 2024. FT also claims that Spotify will add “more professional music videos” to its service as part of those recent deals.

Read more: Thinking About Hi-Res, Lossless, and Spatial Audio (Premium)