Spotify Supremium – What is it and when is it coming?
Once again, rumors are circulating around a higher priced Spotify subscription tier, with additional features, such as hi-fi streaming.
Way back in February 2021, at their first Stream On event, Spotify announced a new hi-fi, CD-quality, lossless audio tier. Spotify were fairly tight-lipped when discussing the update, holiding back details such as whether this would be a higher priced subscription, what quality the tier would top out at and exactly when it would launch, although they did say the feature would begin rolling out “later this year”. Two years later, beyond the occasional acknowledgement, we’ve still heard no official accouncement.
Last year, after a survery from Spotify, rumors started up of a Spotify Platinum tier, offering additional features such as hi-fi streaming, for $20 a month, rather than Spotify Premium, which is still at $10 per month.
When Spotify first announced a hi-fi tier, offering higher fidelity audio at a higher price was the norm, with streaming services like Amazon Music, TIDAL, Deezer and Qobuz all charging on top of regular subscriptions for the feature. However it is now common for streaming services to offer high fidelity streaming at no additional cost, with all of the above streaming services bundling in hi-fi with their base subscriptions.
More recently, in March, Spotify Co-President Gustav Söderström spoke to The Verge on the feature and delay:
We announced it, but then the industry changed for a bunch of reasons. 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. The industry changed and we had to adapt. We want to do it in a way where it works for us from a cost perspective as well. I’m not allowed to comment on our label agreements, nor on what other players in the industry did, for obvious reasons.
Gustav Söderström, Co-President, Spotify
According to a new report from Bloomberg, hi-fi music streaming could be on the horizon, with Spotify potentially due launch a higher tier, codenamed ‘Supremium’. Bloomberg reports that Spotify delayed the launch of a hi-fi tier after Apple Music and Amazon Music both started offering hi-fi streaming at no extra cost.
Due to the marketing changing, a higher tier would need to offer substantially more features to see a return. One such other rumored feature that we’ve seen Spotify dip their toes into is audiobooks. This makes sense, as Spotify’s current audiobooks feature and pricing is a mess. Bloomberg suggests Spotify could offer a specific number of titles or a certain number of hours with a Supremium subcription. This is similar to Audible, which offers unlimited access to a select range of exclusive titles, as well as a certain number of credits per month to spend on any book.
Bloomberg says we could see a potential launch of the feature in the US from October and sooner in other markets.