Mo' Money, No HiFi

Spotify HiFi, the long-promised lossless, CD-quality audio tier, is still out there on the horizon. First announced back in 2021 with a launch supposedly just around the corner, it’s been pushed back year after year. The latest signs suggest it could finally land as part of a new “Music Pro” add-on, bundled with extra features, sometime before the end of 2025, according to TechRadar. 

After this is published, Spotify will likely announce that these price increases were in anticipation of an increase in audio quality, as currently, the rumours are circulating again. A price increase suggests they may not have been as successful as Apple Music in negotiating better royalty terms for lossless audio, which is included in Apple’s standard subscription (Apple Music, or any other platform that hasn’t added a price increase for higher quality, for that matter), and Spotify listeners are footing the bill. “Music Pro” is hinted to have things like headphone optimization and advanced mixing tools, too. Cool.

A quick check on Spotify’s own forums shows that once loyal subscribers have had enough.

Spotify has been using media outlets since 2021 to announce that better quality is on the horizon (at least every 4-6 months), and this might be one bait too far.

In the end, Spotify can point to extras like audiobooks, podcasts, and Wrapped as justification for charging more. Fair enough, those are genuine value adds to some people, because it can feel like more for less. But the holes are still glaring, no progress on audio quality, a discovery system that feels stale, and the persistent clutter of “fake artists” and alleged payola tracks clogging playlists.

Meanwhile, competitors are quietly making their own offers more interesting. YouTube has just rolled out YouTube Lite in Germany for €5.99/month, offering fewer ads than the free tier without the full Premium price tag. Apple Music continues to play the stripped-back, no-fuss card. The interface can be clunky, but the sound quality? Starkly better. Try a free trial of either, and you will literally hear the difference.

But we’re not here to convince you to get the most from your money, or tell you that if you love music, you’re better off elsewhere than Spotify. You probably already know.

Spotify isn’t winning this streaming race because it is the best. It is winning because it is the hardest to say goodbye to. Their free tier hooks you so beautifully, build those playlists, your listening history, your wrapped, so many years of your little micro-curation world. It is hard to say goodbye. Because anything we spend time on is difficult to leave. But 14,000 songs? Could never be you, right? Moving feels like a job, a task that's time-consuming and scary. It is easier to let that direct debit run, isn’t it?

(No, use FreeYourMusic if you're fed up with Spotify's lack of features. Move your playlists.)

Really, what does 1 dollar, euro, or pound mean? It is so… arbitrary almost. Almost. This isn’t about the number, though; this is about the psychology. They don’t need to be better for you, ‘cause you’re going to pay them anyway. They know that leaving is harder than staying, and so that relatively small price increase feels fine.

The answer to every year of ‘no hifi this year, everyone’ is to add something else for a while. Short dopamine hits. Music Generation quiz, horoscopes, Capsules, Wrapped, audiobooks, podcasts, ticket sales, early access, seasonal promos… and whatever else they think up next.

When you look at that list, it seems like a lot of value, and if you like all that stuff, it is. But none of it makes the core music experience better. Even the EQ is old news.

Apple Music takes the opposite route: stripped-back, no fuss, and sound quality that is how you should hear the music you love. It doesn’t try to be everything, it tries to be music. YouTube Music is going the other way again, with the Lite €5.99 plan making an appearance (not in all regions). Fewer features, fewer ads, no bloat, just enough for casual listeners. And Amazon? It hides music in the bundle economy. Pay for Prime, get music folded in, like it’s just a little extra flourish on the side of the delivery business.

Each strategy says something. Apple bets on fidelity. YouTube bets on access. Amazon bets on convenience. Spotify bets on inertia, piling on enough “features” that leaving feels like tearing down scaffolding. The extras aren’t add-ons, they’re anchors, holding you in place, never drowning but never quite floating either. They just keep you there, waiting for the HiFi, and instead, you get another hour of audiobook listening.

We can see this in action elsewhere in life. Netflix adds games and reality shows while raising prices, banking on the fact you’ll never cancel because there’s something you want to watch eventually. Amazon bundles shopping, streaming, e-books, and delivery until Prime feels less like a subscription and more like a utility bill. Even your gym membership runs on inertia. You might go a few times, then end up on the couch with chips (and dip and Netflix), telling yourself you’ll ‘go one day’.

Spotify’s bloat fits right into that culture. The strategy isn’t just “make it better,” it’s “make it harder to leave.”

In this economy, everything gets more expensive, so price rises feel normal, inevitable even. But Spotify’s price increase rhythm is what stands out. Between 2011 and 2023, Spotify held its U.S. pricing steady; between 2023 and now? Three consecutive years of price increases for most major markets.

The general trend is for small but higher-income countries to be affected by the rise. Germany got slapped with a 2 euro increase on a premium individual sub, and reactions are monitored to determine whether to proceed with the next wave.

The ladder-pricing and waves help with the churn and minimize risk, which keeps revenue ticking over. Spotify’s first-ever year of being profitable (read as: first full-year operating profit to the tune of 1.46 billion euros) was 2024. The increases would aim to maximize this by increasing the average revenue per user.

But they aren’t worried. Every price hike shows the same pattern: a blip of cancellations, then calm. Once the dust settles, Spotify shrugs, pockets the higher ARPU, and lines up the next round. But hey, it is business, it is not personal.

How many hikes will they get away with until the blip of a few tens of thousands leaving turns into the hundreds of thousands, or millions? Realistically, it isn’t yet. Not for most of us. We will swallow the extra cost to avoid taking action; we will let our automatic payments run and enjoy the sub-par, too-easy-to-use platform. But this inertia that they (most subscription services, really) bank on won’t last forever, because at one point it doesn’t feel arbitrary anymore.

At one point, it will finally be clear that we’ve never been paying for the music; we’re paying for a stack of bloat that we don’t even use. Audiobooks where? Podcasts, who? And what is the AI DJ anyway? (If you use them all, you are probably having a great time, and that’s cool too, we love that for you.)

The music already sounds better elsewhere, we’re just too lazy to do anything about it.

To that end, we have expanded where our playlists are, you can find us on more platforms, so you can say goodbye to Spotify and still enjoy our hand-picked music:

Until next time,