Spotify menu suggests HiFi streaming might launch soon

In February, Spotify announced a new membership tier called Spotify HiFi, allowing users to listen to music in lossless audio quality.

Now, right after Apple announced its hi-res streaming feature as part of Apple Music, Spotify finally seems to be getting ready for launch.

Reddit user themonarc (via MacRumors) managed to open a new menu in the Spotify mobile app by clicking on the "glitched" icon that appears for a millisecond or two after you open the Now Playing portion of the app. The icon, which says "HiFi," opens a walkthrough with five screens that explain how the new HiFi streaming tier works.

"Use wired devices or speakers that are capable of playing lossless audio, 16-bit/44.1kHz or higher, to successfully listen to music in HiFi," says a message on one of the screens. The walkthrough warns that "most Bluetooth devices don't fully support HiFi," and says that Spotify will "automatically adjust you from HiFi to a lower audio quality when you have poor bandwidth."

Finally, the walkthrough explains that downloading music in HiFi quality when on WiFi will "save you from using up data later on and will allow you to listen to tracks in HiFi when you're offline."

After updating to the latest version of Spotify on my iPhone, I was able to see and access the HiFi menu as well. To get it, you need to open the app, then tap on Now Playing really fast, and then be fast again to tap on the HiFi icon as it disappears in a fraction of a second.

There seems to be no way of actually getting the feature to work at the moment, but given that some of the functionality is already built into the app, one would expect Spotify to launch it fairly soon.

It's possible Spotify waited to see what Apple would charge before launching its own service. Now that we know that lossless audio on Apple Music is free, it's hard (but not impossible) to imagine Spotify charging extra for the feature.