The Hifi upgrade tier for its streaming service promised music free of compression artifacts. Although it is still not available, the service promises CD-quality audio and aims to steer people away from other streaming services like Tidal and Deezer.
Even if you consider yourself an audiophile, you probably don't need to pay more for better music. Not in order to make your music sound better.
Most music streaming services compress audio in one way or another in order to reduce data usage, which can lead to lost information. There are ways of losing music, but they can't reduce file size as much as a good lossy compression can.
Most services turn to lossy compression. The vast majority of people don't have the hearing ability to tell the difference between high quality and low quality music.
If you have enabled this in the app, the existing, $9.99 ad-free tier will stream at a maximum of 320 kbps on the web. I bet most people can not tell the difference between a lossy and a compressed audio file, even though it is obvious.
Our hearing is affected by a lot of placebo. It is more likely that an upgrade or key specification will cause an improvement than a change. Many golden-eared audiophiles will say they can hear a difference without evidence.
Why don't you put your hearing to the test to see if you can handle higher quality audio?
You can test your hearing.
The Digital Feed ABX test is one of the few blind tests that can help you compare audio formats.
The link above compares the quality of the streaming against the file, so it should be similar to the Premium and Hifi tiers. They are randomized, and you don't know which clips are good or bad, you just have to pick.
Depending on how much time you have to kill, you can complete 5, 10, or 20 trials. The more trials you do, the more significant your results are. The test can get quite time consuming as you switch between tracks and it is best to start with 5Repetitions.
Most regular people won't be able to hear the difference if you are like most audio enthusiasts. I failed the test with $400 headphones.
I have also passed the test before. Doing so involves a kind of extreme scrutiny that never applies to normal listening or even critical listening.
In my case, passing this comparison means making my home as quiet as possible, using the best gear I have, and repeating a two or three-second portion over and over again in hopes of hearing the tiniest bit of extra detail or a subtle change at a specific moment. I know what to look for when doing this type hundreds of times.
Being able to identify which tracks match doesn't mean you can tell which track is more realistic.
A few years ago, a survey was conducted by audio blogger Archimago, in which 151 people were asked to choose between two sets of samples. 30% thought the tracks sounded better. 18% said there was no difference. There are a few possible explanations for this beyond the scope of the article, but a whopping 52% preferred the lossy track.
It's fair to assume these participants were mostly audio enthusiasts too, and that most of them used audio systems costing $1,000 or more. There are manyexamples on the web.
What is the point of lossless?
The fact that most people can not tell the difference between high-bitrate and low-bitrate audio doesn't mean that you shouldn't be willing to pay more for your music. There are some reasons you might want to try it.
You don't get the itch of knowing there's something better out there if you have peace of mind.
If the placebo effect makes you think that your music sounds better, then that's a good thing.
You want the music to be the same regardless of whether the differences are audible or not.
You are a statistical outlier with hearing abilities.
There is an argument that we need to listen longer in order to hear the small differences in sound quality.
The HiFi tier could include other perks.
There is no evidence that this is part of the plan, but it is possible that the HiFi streams will lead to more paying artists.
One day audio gear will be good enough to make the difference.
This article is not about paying for lossless music in general. You might want to buy music for archival purposes, or you might want to support artists more directly. Maybe you like having your music on physical media, and you still buy CDs. I still pay for music that's not perfect.
You can bet that the HiFi tier will be more expensive than the Premium tier. If you only upgrade on the promise of an audible improvement, you might want to keep your expectations in check.
I changed some of the language around paying for music. I wanted to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with paying more money for music that is better, but you should have a realistic picture of how the improvements will be.
We have updated this post to include mentions of Apple Music and Amazon Music, as well as a delay in the launch of the service.
