We know you’ve been burned before, but according a promising report from Bloomberg, Spotify is poised to announce a new premium add-on later this year that will finally deliver its much-anticipated HiFi option, as well as some new playlist creation tools.
Although Bloomberg’s report, which cites a “source familiar with the plan,” is light on specific resolution details, it says that the new high-fidelity audio option will be sold as an add-on for existing customer,s who could be charged at least an additional $5 per month depending on their base plan.
The add-on will not only deliver better quality audio — which has been a sore spot for some Spotify users considering that many of its streaming service competitors such as Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and Amazon Music have been delivering hi-res streams for years — but will also include some new playlist creation and library management tools.
In April, Spotify announced that it was beta testing a new AI Playlist creation tool with its U.K. and Australian users that allows them to use ChatGPT-style text prompts to create playlists. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether this is the new playlist tool that Bloomberg’s unnamed source is referring to.
Spotify has been dangling its HiFi carrot out there since first announcing it in 2021, and the rumors have come on the regular ever since (this exact same story broke around this time last year, too). One of the more recent hints came in April of this year when a Reddit user spotted some code in the Spotify app that suggested that the HiFi tier could deliver lossless audio with up to 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC files.
This new HiFi plan information comes on the heels of Spotify’s second price increase in less than a year, with the service’s most popular Premium individual plan going from $11 to $12 per month next month. Spotify’s Duo plan also jumps to $17 per month and the Family plan to $20 per month,while the Student stays the same at $6 a month. It’s unclear which plans the new HiFi add-on will be eligible for.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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