Four years after its announcement, Spotify Lossless is arriving for Premium subscribers, offering HD-quality sound for just about every song in the catalog. The reveal was issued by Spotify VP of Subscriptions Gustav Gyllenhammar, who attributed the delay to “time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality” and ease of use. Spotify Lossless enables streaming in up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC. Lossless joins the previous settings of Low, Normal, High and Very High for data management across Wi-Fi, cellular and downloads. Spotify has also added Smart Filters for better playlist building.

Starting Friday, “customers with Premium subscriptions in over 50 regions including the U.S., UK and Australia” were automatically upgraded to Spotify Lossless, reports TechRadar, calling that “good news considering the service was previously expected to be a paid-for upgrade.”

TechRadar contextualizes the change of strategy to competition in a market where Apple Music provides lossless as part of a standard subscription, “with two extra resolution tiers beyond it that are also free.” Amazon Music followed suit. TechRadar goes on to wonder “What’s left for Spotify’s planned paid-for ‘Supremium’ tier?”

Rapidly evolving compression technology has made the difference between normal streaming and lossless not very noticeable on average equipment, but it becomes very apparent in a quiet room with expensive hardware, TechRadar writes. “Tidal, Apple Music and Qobuz are absolutely killing it in the more serious audio market right now,” making an upgrade to “slightly better than CD quality audio for Spotify customers … very welcome.”

Spotify provides usage instruction in a newsroom post.

Spotify Premium subscribers are also getting Smart Filters to allow more granular control over discovery and playback. Smart filters will allow users to refresh their weekly discovery by genre, pause or hide tracks and use voice control with the DJ feature.

Digital Trends says the Smart Filters “are divided across three broad categories, each with their own subcategories,” adding that “the stiff playback system” is also addressed with the ability to “Add, Sort, and Edit their playback sequence, while also being able to tweak the name and cover art of their playlists” or create a whole new playlist based on a liked track.

Related:
Inside Spotify’s Plot to Take Down Apple, The Wall Street Journal, 9/5/25
Spotify Peeved After 10,000 Users Sold Data to Build AI Tools, Ars Technica, 9/10/25