Spotify brings lossless audio to India, introduces new Premium plans: Price

Spotify has introduced lossless audio in India and overhauled its subscription lineup with new Premium plans, reserving FLAC playback and AI features for the top tier. Check plan prices and benefits

Spotify has brought lossless audio to India along with a rejig in subscription plans. The audio streaming giant now offers four subscription plans, namely - Premium Lite, Premium Standard, Premium Platinum, and Premium Student. Spotify has reserved the lossless audio feature exclusively for the Premium Platinum plan. Other features like Spotify AI DJ have also been reserved for the most pricey plan now. The older plans, like Duo, seem to have been retired.

 

According to Jack Mason, Spotify Studios producer and engineer, "Lossless refers to when there's no change between what you deliver to a streaming service and what the listener hears." He added, "Without lossless, track files might get compressed in the encoding process, which might not lend to the best quality." 

 

Spotify's new subscription plans: Cost and benefits

Spotify Premium Lite plan

• Cost: Rs 139 per month
• Maximum users: 1
• Benefits: Ad-free music, High audio quality (up to ~160kbps)

Spotify Premium Standard plan

• Cost: Rs 199 per month
• Maximum users: 1
• Benefits: Ad-free music, Download to listen offline, Very high audio quality (up to ~320kbps)

Spotify Premium Platinum plan

• Cost: Rs 299 per month
• Maximum users: 3
• Benefits: Lossless audio quality (up to ~24-bit/44.1kHz), Ad-free music, Download to listen offline, Mix your playlists, Your personal AI DJ, AI playlist creation, Connect your DJ software

Spotify Premium Student plan

• Cost: Rs 99 per month
• Maximum users: 1
• Benefits: Download to listen offline, Very high audio quality (up to ~320kbps)

  The company has not yet announced whether the Lossless audio feature will have to be enabled manually or not, akin to its rollout in the US earlier. Also, it is important to note that lossless streaming will consume more data than normal. According to an older press release about the feature’s rollout in the US, music streaming in 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC resolution, which essentially is lossless audio, would consume around 1GB of data per hour.