Then Amazon swiftly responded to Apple’s power play by saying that its own premium high-res tier, Amazon Music HD, would be extended to eligible Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers at the same price they were currently paying. It was simply another feature to hold existing subscribers where they were. Apple’s improved audio would be available “at no additional cost”. This was going to be a commercial pincer movement and those sunlit uplands were tantalisingly close.Įxcept four words took the wind out of those sale sails. Another DSP seeing the upsell potential here. The biggest, of course, was a broadside from Apple in May when it said it was bringing Spatial Audio to Apple Music to let subscribers “ listen to more than 75 million songs in Lossless Audio - the way the artists created them in the studio ”. The music industry was avariciously licking its lips at the upsell opportunities for this (hopefully) luxury subscription tier when it eventually appeared. They even had one of the biggest pop stars in the world putting their name to it. Here was proof the service was investing in new features for a bolder future. This was a product that consumers were, by all accounts, practically ready to storm Spotify’s grandiose offices to get their hands (ears) on. It was also positioned as a marketing slam dunk. Users would be up and revenues would be up: it would be a double digital miracle. Prices being sanded down for students or bulk discounts being offered for families and couples would no longer have to provide a growth engine based more on user numbers than on revenues: high-res audio could bring in more listeners and, crucially, charge them more.

Spotify hifi streaming tier coming year