Updated September 2022: Tidal has (again) displaced Apple Music as our audiophile pick, due to audio quality upgrades. Be sure to check out our many other buying guides, including the Best Wireless Headphones, Best Wirefree Earbuds, and Best Cheap Headphones. We put ’em all to the test, and these are our favorites. Most of them have free tiers, but the experience improves if you subscribe and pay a monthly fee. The things that separate streaming services today are the quality of music discovery-whether it’s based on algorithms or human curation-the user experience on desktop and mobile apps, what devices you can use them with, and their sound quality. All these services’ libraries pretty much mirror each other, with tens of millions of songs both popular and obscure. These days, it’s more about the user interface than catalog choice. For example, Taylor Swift might have been on Apple Music but not on Spotify Tidal was originally weighted toward hip-hop. Variety will have more on the situation as it develops.Picking a music streaming service used to feel like choosing a sports team. While it’s fair to say that audio quality is not a huge priority for a majority of the generation of music fans raised on playing music over the internet, it’s the kind of thing that once you’ve experienced, you never want to go back. As noted by 9 to 5 Mac, Apple is also rumored to have new AirPods Pro 2 coming later this year that support wireless Lossless playback. While it had initially said there would be a higher pricing tier, Apple’s move may have complicated that plan.

Spotify announced its plans for Spotify HiFi with characteristic fanfare during a press conference nearly a year ago. Amazon Music, the third-largest streaming service in the world followed a few months later Apple Music, the second-largest, announced Spatial and Lossless Audio last May, for no additional cost. Spotify has been lapped by virtually every other major streaming service in the high-quality audio stakes: Tidal and Deezer have both offered it for years and Qobuz, a French high-quality-only service, launched in the U.S.

Spotify hifi tier coming year