Spotify HiFi may finally be imminent with awkward new name

(Image credit: Spotify)

Spotify HiFi has been perpetually delayed since it was first revealed all the way back in February 2021, but it looks like we might finally see the new tier arrive soon with a new moniker: "Spotify Supremium."

Backing up a leaked roadmap from June, on Threads, inventor of the hashtag Chris Messina shared some of the expected features from the $19.99 service. He also revealed the logo of the tier that is now known as Supremium — an amalgamation of "Super" and "Premium," suggesting that Spotify Premium will maintain its current branding.

The rumored features coming to Spotify Supremium — (Image credit: Chris Messina / Threads)

While Spotify HiFi was pitched as being all about the 24-bit, lossless audio quality, here, it’s relegated to being the final item in a list of six exclusive features. That may be because it’s not exactly a unique selling point anymore: In the years since Spotify announced HiFi, the likes of Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited and Tidal have all offered lossless music, and some without requiring you to pay extra.

In other words, to make the $19.99-per-month fee more palatable, it looks like Spotify will be bundling other extras not exclusively of interest to audiophiles.

Most of these are fairly self-explanatory, with special attention paid to playlist creation. “Advanced playlist mixing tools” will improve your song ordering by taking into account BPM (beats per minute), vibe, mood, activity and genre, and there’s also the promise of “AI playlist generation tools.”

This will be accompanied by “Last.fm-style listening stats” known in Spotify as “Highlights” to keep tabs on your favorite artists, songs and albums. You’ll also get 20-30 hours of audiobook listening included, which is more than the 15 hours Spotify currently offers Premium account holders in the U.K. and Australia (the U.S. is “following later this year”).

The only mysterious entry on the list is something called “Your Sound Capsule,” but given the other listed features mesh with those uncovered in an app code dive by a Redditor last month, it seems likely this is a rebranded version of “Soundcheck.” The Reddit user r/Hypixely describes this as something that “tells you about your listening habits and discover [sic.] what mix of sounds is ‘uniquely you’."

Given references to this are clearly already in the app, it feels like we might actually see Spotify Supremium arrive before the year is out. That’s Messina’s prediction, based on references to “pricing experiments” from last year’s Investor Day.

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Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing up the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. He also handles all the Wordle coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game for the last several years in an effort to keep his streak forever intact.