- Spotify has inked a new deal with Warner Music Group
- That could include a long-awaited Hi-Fi tier for super-fans and audiophiles
- Competing services have begun offering Hi-Res Audio as standard, though
Spotify is about to get more complicated, if a new announcement from the music streaming service is anything to go by.
On February 6, Spotify and Warner Music Group announced a new partnership deal to "deliver new fan experiences, a deeper music and video catalog, further paid subscription tiers, and differentiated content bundles."
The deal is likely to see even more music and video content added to Spotify's 80,000 track library, with support for a new 'superfan' premium tier expected to launch some time in 2025.
While this may finally give Spotify subscribers access to Hi-Res Audio – something that Tidal and Apple Music have offered for years – it also represents another complication in Spotify’s increasingly sprawling content offering.
A strength of Spotify has been its simplicity: it hasn’t split up its user base between various pricing options, other than ‘free’ and ‘paid’, and casual users don’t have to contend with whether to opt for Hi-Fi audio their smartphone speakers and budget headphones are incapable of recreating anyway.
Spotify also doesn’t need you to suss out various other content services at the point of subscription, as with Apple One or Amazon Prime’s group offerings. And if you stuck to the free tier, it’s very very easy to just pick a song and start playing.
But, as the service has ballooned in its scope and ambition, pursuing high-profile podcast hosts and expanded video content, Spotify has only got more complicated. There are now, in some countries, separate tiers without access to audiobooks, alongside various options for individuals and families, and a new superfan tier is only going to lengthen the list of options and bundles on offer.
Cash grab
I’m also irritated by the suggestion of a further paywall for Hi-Res music. These days, both Apple Music and Tidal include Hi-Res Audio as part of its basic package, which does not seem to be Spotify’s strategy here – higher-quality audio is something to be further paywalled, rather than something to draw users to the platform in the first place.
Given that Spotify offers notably less money per stream ($0.00437) to artists than either Apple ($0.0056-0.0078) or Tidal ($0.013), let alone Qobuz (a plush $0.022), it’s hard to imagine those well-monetized superfans will funnel more cash to artists rather than Spotify's coffers.
But Spotify’s market position means that it’s unlikely to be punished for paywalling a feature included by default in its competitors’ standard plans.
Spotify is the dominant music streaming service, aided by a free, ad-supported streaming tier that brings its subscriber count to over 650 million – many hundred times larger than that of Apple Music or Tidal. Spotify is simply the place most people listen to music today.
I’m happy for Spotify users who’ve been waiting too long for Hi-Res Audio to hit the service. But this new strategy would only make me wonder why I haven’t moved over to another platform yet.
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