Spotify is readying plans to launch a new premium tier that will offer lossless quality and expanded access to audiobooks at a higher price.
On Tuesday, the financial news outlet Bloomberg said the internal name for the new tier is “Supremium,” and will finally offer the Spotify Hi-Fi feature that has been in development for several years.
Spotify wanted to offer the higher-quality audio tier at a cost of $20 a month by the end of 2021, but plans changed after Apple announced it would offer lossless-quality audio streams through its Apple Music for just $10 a month. Spotify charges the same amount for its Spotify Premium tier, which caps music streams at 320 kilobits per second (kbps), and the company couldn’t see charging more for something Apple was offering at a lower price.
Apple and others have slowly raised the price of their streaming services to around $11 a month, and Spotify is planning to do the same, according to CEO Daniel Ek. Just how much Spotify will raise the price of its Premium tier remains to be seen, and the company still hasn’t settled on a definitive price for the “Supremium” tier.
The new ultra-premium tier will launch outside the United States first, Bloomberg said, though Spotify does eventually plan to offer it stateside.
Spotify has been under pressure to generate more revenue after it spent big acquiring on-demand audio shows and key talent to bolster its podcast business. The company lost €156 million (around $170 million) on more than €3.04 billion (around $3.34 billion) in revenue during the first three months of this year, widening its loss from €6 million (around $6.6 million) reported during the same period in 2022.
