Spotify lossless streaming is finally here and it’s included with a Premium plan

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: over a half-decade of rumors, infrequent teases and affirmations that something is on the way, only for fans to impatiently bide their time and the thing to eventually arrive with very little advance warning. No, I’m not talking about Hollow Knight: Silksong this time. Spotify is finally rolling out a lossless option that offers higher-quality music streaming.

Best of all, the company is offering it to Premium members at no extra charge. You’ll get a notification once it’s enabled on your account. Starting today, Spotify is rolling out lossless audio in the US, UK, Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal and its home territory of Sweden. In all, Spotify Premium users in more than 50 markets will gain access to lossless audio by the end of October.

The option is available on mobile, desktop and tablets, along with many Spotify Connect-compatible devices, including Sony, Bose, Samsung, and Sennheiser products. Spotify Lossless will make its way to Sonos and Amazon devices, as well as others, next month.

Somewhat annoyingly, you’ll have to enable Spotify Lossless manually, and you’ll need to do that on each device on which you want to use it. To switch it on in the Spotify app, tap your profile icon in the top left, then go to Settings & Privacy > Media Quality. From there, you can choose to turn on lossless audio for Wi-Fi and cellular streaming, as well as your downloads. When it’s on, you’ll see a lossless indicator in the Now Playing view and the Connect Picker.

Lossless streaming uses more data than other quality options, which is why Spotify is offering several settings for Wi-Fi, cellular and downloads so you (hopefully) don’t bust through any data caps you might have. You’ll be able to see how much data the various options — low, normal, high, very high and lossless quality — will use to help you figure out which way to go.

Spotify Lossless offers up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC streaming. The company says the option means you’ll be able to stream in “greater detail across nearly every song available on Spotify.” 

Of note, the company says that you’ll get the best lossless experience when you stream music on Wi-Fi using wired headphones or speakers on non-Bluetooth connections, because Bluetooth doesn’t yet have enough bandwidth to support lossless audio. As such, if you try streaming lossless music with a Bluetooth connection, the audio signal will still be compressed before it reaches your ears. It might take slightly longer for each lossless audio track to start playing too, as your device might need to cache it to avoid mid-song stutters.

“The wait is finally over; we’re so excited lossless sound is rolling out to Premium subscribers,” said Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify’s vice-president of subscriptions, said. “We’ve taken time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality, ease of use, and clarity at every step, so you always know what’s happening under the hood. With Lossless, our premium users will now have an even better listening experience.”

Gyllenhammar isn’t kidding about Spotify taking its time to offer lossless listening. It was reported all the way back in 2017 that the company was “close” to delivering lossless audio. In 2021, Spotify said it would start offering a CD-quality option that year, but that didn’t happen and the company has largely kept mum about a higher-quality streaming option since (it said in 2022 a Spotify HiFi experience was still in the pipeline, but declined to commit to a release window).

Earlier this year, it was suggested that Spotify would finally offer a lossless option in 2025 and that it would be a $6 per month add-on. Thankfully, that’s not quite the case, as Lossless is included with a $12 Premium subscription that will definitely not get more expensive at some point in the future. Nope, no way. In any case, including it with Premium puts Spotify on par with the likes of Apple Music, which has offered lossless streaming to paid subscribers at no extra cost since 2021. Now then, Spotify, about Dolby Atmos…

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-lossless-streaming-is-finally-here-and-its-included-with-a-premium-plan-131009528.html?src=rss