In design circles Spotify is seen as setting the pace in several areas: It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire some prominent podcast studios and individual shows such as Gimlet Media and Joe Rogan, and receives revenue from this type of content since Spotify inserts its own ads into the podcasts using a platform that it also purchased. It often seems aimed at de-emphasizing artists in favor of gaining user allegiance to Spotify’s algorithmic playlists. Spotify prioritizes automated hands-off music playing rather than the immersive listening preferred by audiophiles going deep into an album or artist. I had a realization as I got into using Spotify more frequently: it’s not a music streaming service but a platform for playlists and podcasts. The final technical details and performance of Spotify Hifi will have to wait until its launch, but here in this article, I will take a closer look at how Spotify was designed, and what those design decisions mean for the listener experience.
Well, unless you count Spotify promoting its own offerings. The promise of a hi-fi tier has pushed me off the fence and into Premium where Ogg Vorbis streams max out at 320kbps, offline listening permits playback whilst out of mobile range and Spotify Connect allows me to send streams to compatible third-party devices. Has Spotify’s forthcoming CD-quality ‘hi-fi’ tier piqued your interest in its service? You might be like me: I have an ‘audiophile’-oriented streaming service already on deck but I have had the occasional dalliance with Spotify’s free tier over the years - to sample its catalog and its playlists.
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