Do you use a hi-fi music streaming service?

Or are you sticking with standard quality?

Although it seems like the market has largely settled on a couple of flagship options, there’s no shortage of ways to stream your favorite songs these days. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music — these are just a handful of the apps you can download from the Play Store right now before diving into curated playlists and new releases. If you really want to get the most out of your music library, though, you’ll need higher-quality audio. You can always turn to local playback, but if you’d rather stick to streaming, plenty of existing plans deliver precisely that.

There is, of course, the Spotify-shaped elephant in the room. Despite having announced a high-quality tier more than a year ago, the company has yet to launch its “HiFi” branded service — and it doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon. In January, we learned that no specific timing details existed for the plan just yet, despite the initial blog post announcing a release in 2021. Luckily, it’s easy to switch from Spotify to another service that does have higher quality music streams, and there are plenty to pick from.

Apple Music made a big splash last year after it announced high-quality songs at no extra charge, though with some wonky device support on its side. It was a move that spurred plenty of action from the competition, as Amazon followed suit by ditching its hi-fi tier in lieu of the standard “Music Unlimited” plan for no extra fees.

And of course, there’s Tidal, one of the original names in the high-quality streaming game. Despite holding less name recognition than some of the bigger players in this space, it’s kept on trucking. Late last year, Tidal even launched an ad-supported plan to rival Spotify, along with a cheaper high-quality plan that now price matches the rest of the industry. Smaller services like Deezer and Qobuz also offer high-bitrate streaming, though their prices are higher than the current competition.

With high-quality music services now cheaper than ever, we’re curious if our readers have made the jump. Have you signed up for a lossless or hi-fi streaming service, or are you happy with your standard plan?

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