Spotify Launching HiFi Tier, Surround Sound for Batman, Podcast Ad Network

Spotify announced high-fidelity audio, advertising tools for podcasts and its expansion into 80 countries, adding a potential 1 billion new listeners, on its virtual Stream On event Monday. Spotify HiFi will roll out later this year for Premium subscribers in select markets, said the company, saying it’s one of the features most requested by users.

The service will deliver music in “CD-quality, lossless audio” to devices and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers. The company is working with “some of the world’s biggest speaker manufacturers” to make the step-up service accessible through Spotify Connect, it said. Pricing and timing weren’t given.

Artists Billie Eilish and Finneas gave testimonials to the power of high-quality audio and "really loud speakers” in prerecorded segments. “There’s things you will not hear if you don’t have a good sound system,” said Eilish. “We make music that wants to be heard the way it was made.” Finneas referenced “weird things buried” in studio recordings -- like “whisper layers” between lines that artists want fans to hear -- that will be audible in the higher quality streams.

The expansion to more than 80 markets and 36 languages is Spotify’s broadest expansion to date and will bring the total number of markets to over 170, said the company. It’s working with local creators and partners to develop experiences tailored to specific markets, including scaled language translations and specialized payment formats. New markets include Pakistan, Bangladesh, Caribbean countries and numerous African states.

Data shows Spotify users are increasingly engaging with music from other countries, said Dawn Ostroff, chief content and advertising business officer. The platform’s users find more than 80% of their streams outside their home country, she said. Listeners will be able to select and search from Spotify’s worldwide catalog; the home screen in new markets will surface personalized playlist programming for listeners, the company said. Browse and search pages will feature worldwide content hubs and adapt to the local market and the listeners’ the more they use the service, it said.

An expansion of Spotify’s relationship with DC Comics will bring surround sound to Batman podcasts, said filmmaker and executive producer David Goyer. The upcoming Batman Unburied, a “deep dive into Batman’s unconscious,” will use immersive effects, Goyer said. The idea of a “creepy” character “leaning over the listener’s shoulder and whispering things to them ... is going to be particularly nightmarish,” he said. Other podcasts in the series will feature Superman, Lois Lane, Wonder Woman, Joker, Catwoman, The Riddler and others.

Ostroff predicted that by 2025 streaming alone will surpass the music industry’s peak revenue reached at the turn of the century: “The music industry is growing again,” she said, crediting growth to streaming. Much of streaming revenue today is coming from subscriptions, but as audiences continue to migrate from linear listening to on-demand consumption, “that revenue will also come from advertising.” In the U.S., consumers spend about the same amount of time listening to digital audio as they do streaming video -- about nine hours a week, Ostroff said. Digital audio advertising hasn't seen comparable growth, she said, citing an opportunity to steal share from the $30 billion advertising market for terrestrial and satellite radio that "don’t have a fraction of the insights expected in modern advertising.”

The same challenges have carried over into podcasting because podcast consumption has been measured by downloads, said Ostroff. “Advertisers are flying blind,” she said: “They have no idea if their ad was actually heard.” Spotify’s shift of podcasts from downloads to streaming “unlocks that data,” and streaming ad insertion (SAI) builds on the opportunity. Spotify’s recent purchase of Megaphone allows it to scale SAI to publishers beyond its exclusive and original content to third-party publishers, she said.

This year, Spotify will expand SAI to top anchor creators, and the company announced Monday the Spotify Audience Network, a podcast ad marketplace, where advertisers can buy across a network of original, exclusive and independent podcasts. Advertisers will be able to reach and target Spotify’s audience of “hundreds of millions at scale.” It’s also expanding Spotify Ad Studio to podcasts.