There is a catch, however. Spotify’s lossless option tops out at 24-bit / 44.1 kHz FLAC. Apple Music, Tidal, and Qobuz all offer HiRes FLAC support at up to 24-bit / 192 kHz. Granted, once you start entering 24-bit FLAC territory it can get pretty hard to tell the difference unless you’re a particularly demanding audiophile with a soundsystem priced in the same range as a used sedan. But it does leave room for Spotify to add on one of those rumored “deluxe” tiers to squeeze a bit more money out of.
Spotify launches lossless streaming after years of delays
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After years of speculation and repeated delays, Spotify has officially introduced lossless audio streaming.
Talk of a high-fidelity tier first surfaced in 2017, with the company at one point promising a launch in 2021. By mid-2024, Spotify insisted the feature was “almost ready,” but skepticism grew as rollout timelines kept slipping—especially while the platform focused on less-requested features like direct messaging.
Lossless audio will be available to all Premium subscribers in 50 markets over the next two months, including Australia, Germany, Japan, the US, and the UK—without introducing a new tier or subscription.
Subscribers will receive an in-app notification when the feature becomes available. From there, it can be enabled in the media quality settings.
Users will see an indicator in the Now Playing bar and Connect Picker for compatible devices, starting with Sony, Bose, Samsung, and Sennheiser, with Sonos and Amazon support coming next month.
How to enable lossless audio. Image: Spotify
This leaves YouTube as the only major streaming music service (and I’m using the term “major” loosely here) that doesn’t support lossless streaming. And, there’s been no indication from Google that it’s going to change its tune anytime soon.
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