Spotify finally adds lossless audio for paid users

Spotify is finally launching a long-awaited feature - high-quality lossless audio for Premium subscribers. After years of anticipation, the company has begun to gradually open up access to lossless - the feature is already available in Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, the United States, and the United Kingdom. In October, more than 50 more countries will be added, but the list has not yet been announced. Lossless allows you to listen to music in FLAC format with a resolution of up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz, which is considered to be a studio level of sound quality.

There are lossy and lossless audio storage formats. Lossy algorithms (the most common is mp3) are designed to take up less space. Previously, this was important due to limited storage capacity, but now it plays a role in streaming - transferring a 30 MB song from a server in another country is slower than transferring a 3 MB song.

What is lost in lossy?

Algorithms use the peculiarities of human hearing and cut out sounds that are drowned out by louder sounds. These algorithms are most effective in reducing the amount of data in complex scenes with many instruments. You're unlikely to hear the backing guitar when the drum kit hits, so you can cut out part of that track. It is believed that at a bitrate of 320 kbit/sec for the mp3 format, the human ear is no longer able to distinguish the processed track from the analogue AudioCD.

There is even more advanced lossy compression - dynamic compression. These algorithms dynamically change the bitrate during the track, compressing simple scenes more and improving the quality in complex and rich scenes.

The hard life of an audiophile

As you might imagine, audiophiles have always fought for high-quality sound. And even though they did not show any significant shortcomings of the classic formats in blind tests, they held on to the old analogue formats to the very end. The gold standard in the audio industry is vinyl recording, which is how master recordings were made in the studio until recently, and from which all copies were reproduced. Even the transition to the analogue AudioCD format was frowned upon and considered non-canonical. There is an interesting study when two AudioCDs were used in a blind test, one with a clean recording, and the other with the creaking of the radiol mechanism and parasitic noise from the needle during silence, and audiophiles chose the processed AudioCD as a higher quality one by a significant margin.

However, the industry gradually switched to laser discs. But as soon as they came to terms with laser technology, the poor conservatives began to be dragged to digital formats. Audiophiles resisted stubbornly and had to create client-oriented lossless audio storage formats. Apple introduced ALAC, and all other companies use the Free Lossless Audio Codec - FLAC.

It would be a lie to say that audiophiles gave up easily. In the 2010s, sales of vinyl records surpassed the levels of the 1980s and continue to grow steadily. But for more moderate audiophiles, there are still lossless audio formats available. Being an audiophile is expensive, so Apple and Spotify are both dreaming of capturing this audience.

How to enable Lossless

• Click on the profile icon in the upper left corner
• Go to Settings → Audio quality
• Select Lossless for Wi-Fi, mobile network or downloads
• The Lossless indicator will appear in the Now Playing or Connect Picker window

Important! Lossless must be activated separately on each device. For the best experience, Spotify recommends using wired headphones or speakers - Bluetooth does not support full bandwidth for Lossless.

Spotify has also introduced a new feature called Mix, which allows users to create smooth transitions between tracks in playlists. Users can adjust the volume, equaliser, effects, and even create their own mix covers.