While Spatial Audio is available on Spotify, users report it does not sound quite as good as on Apple Music. For example, you can use spatial audio on Spotify, but it does not sound as good as it does on Apple Music.
Spotify has spatial audio, but users of the app consistently notice its poor quality and prefer that offered by Apple Music. Spatial audio is normally enabled by Dolby Atmos, which is one that Apple Music and numerous streaming services use, but Spotify’s provisioning is different.
In addition to being behind Apple Music in lacking lossless audio support, Spotify also still lacks support for spatial audio, another feature that launched last year with Apple’s streaming music service.
Even if Spotify has a change of heart and is committed to making Spotify’s Lossless features more accessible, Apple Music would still benefit from Spatial Audio support, and perhaps even higher-quality hi-res playback.
Apple Music is going to be offering lossless audio streaming in June, while Spotify is going to offer…well, we are still not sure, but it is likely to be pretty soon. Apple, which previously offered only lossy streaming audio, announced in May that Apple will offer lossless audio at up to 24-bit/192kHz (which is considered hi-res audio, not CD-quality or 16-bit/44.1kHz), as well as spatial sound powered by Dolby Atmos, all at the same price as its standard streaming music tier.
At the same time, Amazon announced it was dropping its premium pricing rates on lossless, high-resolution, spatial-audio music tracks, effectively offering the same pricing structure as Apple. Apple launched Lossless as Apple’s High Definition Audio option, offering music with higher fidelity than regular.
Spotify’s Competitive Advantage
An important HiFi feature is the Spotify equivalent of Apple Musics Lossless Audio support, which launched in May of 2021 in Apple Music. By contrast, Spotify, the competitor of Apple Music, is offering a HiFi service later this year to Premium subscribers, which is lossless, CD-quality audio.
Because Spotify HiFi will let Spotify Premium subscribers update their subscriptions to allow them to listen to far higher-quality, lossless audio streams via Spotify Connect. All Apple Music subscribers will get multiple options for lossless streaming as well, starting at the 16-bit/44.1kHz CD-quality options, going up to 24-bit/192kHz — this is truly hi-res audio.
The streaming quality on both services is certainly enough to please the casual music listener. Apple Music would also offer perhaps the better bargains over Tidal and Deezer, since Tidal limits 360-Reality Audio content in its premium membership tiers.
Tidal, as well as a few other services like Amazon Music HD, actually do offer high-resolution audio. It is worth noting that, even if the streaming app supports spatial audio, movies and shows must also be Dolby Atmos-enabled to utilize spatial audio. You can listen to spatial-audio-enabled content using AirPods on recent iPhones or iPads, and also on the Apple TV 4K or new MacBook Pro.
Headphones Binauralize One’s Audio
One must not forget that listening to 3-D audio with headphones is binarized audio. Binauralized audio can be played in the most normal stereo format, so it is compatible with any streaming service, and is quite popular as 8D audio for instance, on YouTube. Of course, binaural audio has the downside that it is not quite as object-based as Sonys and Dolbys object-based formats, and thus must only be heard through headphones, and offers no additional customization and not even head-tracking.
The MP3 format works by eliminating sounds that humans cannot hear anyway, like really high-frequency sounds or those at lower frequencies, and using a whole host of other tricks, like merging the sound data of left- and right-field stereo channels into one. Truly lossless audio can be delivered over wired Internet, 5G, or WiFi, which means that you can stream it on a phone, a laptop, or your smart speaker.
Apple Music and Spotify, for instance, both use different lossless audio codecs (a codec is software that encodes and decodes audio data). Most of the major streaming audio services are still defaulting to lossy compressed audio — mp3 in the case of Spotify, AAC in the case of Apple. Apple Music uses something called ALAC; as far as Spotify is concerned, we have no idea what codec Spotify will be using, but it is almost certain to not be ALAC, which is an Apple-owned codec.
Apple Music vs. Spotify
This has become a pretty significant difference between Apple Music and its biggest rival, Spotify because its biggest rival continues to emphasize providing high-fidelity audio to its streaming services. It simultaneously brings Apple Music into line with audiophile-oriented services such as Tidal and Deezer, both of which incorporate 360-degree music using Sonys 360 Reality Audio format, while also adding a critical edge against Spotify, which does not offer any sort of 3D/360-degree format at all.
Rival app Tidal is known to include hi-fi listening support, which starts with its $10-per-month plan, although you will need to pay an expensive $20-per-month for access to formats such as Dolby Atmos and Master Quality Audio – two things Apple Music has had since its launch.
If you are looking to get outside the Apple ecosystem while streaming music, Spotify is certainly capable of satisfying listeners thanks to the sheer volume of music and podcasts available through Spotify, as well as its strong music discovery algorithms. Over the years, Spotify has been diversifying its library of content to be a complete streaming app for audio, so the company has gone to great lengths to acquire high-profile podcasters such as Joe Rogan.
I am likely still going to occasionally hop on Apple Music to check out the latest album on Spatial Audio or to catch a radio interview with an artist I enjoy, but as far as daily listening goes, Spotify is officially back on rotation. Casual listeners who just enjoy hearing music and other audio while doing chores and exercising are going to be happy with Spotify.
