Apple / music / SPOTIFY: MUSIC AND PODCASTS
REVIEW
Spotify finally shipped lossless, and the rest of the app caught up too.
The 2025 lossless rollout and the 2026 tablet redesign close two of the longest-standing gaps in the iPhone's most-installed music app — even as the third US price hike in four years tests how much goodwill that buys.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 5 MIN READ
For most of the last decade, Spotify’s pitch was that the algorithm made up for what the audio quality didn’t deliver. You traded 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis for Discover Weekly, Daily Mixes, and the fact that everyone you might share a playlist with already had the app. That trade is finally over. Lossless arrived in September 2025 — four years after the original HiFi tease — and in April 2026 the iPad app stopped being a phone app projected onto glass.
What’s left is the most complete music product on iOS, with a recommendation engine no competitor has matched, and a US price tag that has now risen in three of the last four years. Spotify is asking $12.99 a month for the Individual plan in 2026, two dollars more than Apple Music, and the question the app has to answer is whether discovery and reach are still worth the premium when the audio finally is.
The answer for most people is yes — but the margin is thinner than it used to be.
Lossless on Spotify is finally here, four years late, and the discovery engine still has no peer on iOS.
FEATURES
Lossless streaming landed in September 2025 — up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC, no extra fee, configurable per network in Settings. The quality tiers now read Low, Normal, High, Very High, and Lossless, with separate toggles for Wi-Fi, cellular, and offline downloads. Spotify Connect carries the lossless stream to compatible Sony, Bose, Sennheiser, and Sonos hardware.
The April 2026 tablet redesign reworks the iPad app from a stretched iPhone into something built for the larger canvas. The sidebar collapses and expands; portrait and landscape reflow rather than rescale; you can browse the library on one half of the screen while a track keeps playing on the other. The redesign also reaches CarPlay and the iPhone, where iOS 26's automix feature now crossfades tracks at the system level.
Discovery is still where the app earns its install. Daily Mixes, Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and the autoplaying personalised radio at the end of any queue remain the most accurate recommendation engine in consumer music software. Jam sessions let up to five people queue from the same playlist in realtime, and as of January 2026, iMessage threads can show your current track and a Request to Jam button inline.
Podcasts and audiobooks share the same app and the same now-playing bar. Premium subscribers get 15 hours of audiobook listening per month included; podcasts run free with mid-roll ads on most shows and ad-free on Spotify-exclusive ones.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The recommendation algorithm has aged better than any other piece of the product. Discover Weekly still surfaces music you'd never have found and would have liked anyway, week after week, and the Daily Mixes do a better job of holding a mood than any human-curated radio station. Apple Music's Listen Now tab is closer than it was three years ago, but it still feels like a catalogue browser pretending to be a DJ.
Lossless finally arriving — quietly, with no upcharge — closed the biggest credibility gap in the product. The cross-platform footprint is unmatched: every console, every smart speaker, every car, every TV operating system, and every browser. Collaborative playlists, Jam, and the new Messages integration make Spotify the only music service that treats sharing as a first-class feature instead of a screenshot of a URL.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
Sound quality is the right answer one tier late. Apple Music has shipped Hi-Res Lossless at 24-bit/192 kHz and Dolby Atmos for free with the subscription since 2021; Tidal HiFi has done FLAC for longer. Spotify's 24-bit/44.1 kHz is CD quality, not hi-res, and there's still no Dolby Atmos or spatial format. On a HomePod or any half-decent pair of headphones the gap is audible if you're listening for it.
The other unforced error is pricing. The January 2026 US increase pushed Individual to $12.99, Duo to $18.99, Family to $21.99, Student to $6.99 — the third hike in four years, now meaningfully above Apple Music's $10.99 Individual tier despite a thinner feature set on iOS. The new car mode is missing on iPhone unless you connect via CarPlay, the lyrics feature still hides behind Premium, and the AI DJ remains English-only.
CONCLUSION
Install Spotify if discovery is the reason you pay for music, if you share playlists with people who use different phones, or if the rest of your audio life — podcasts, audiobooks, the TV in the kitchen — is already on the platform. Choose Apple Music instead if you live entirely inside Apple devices and care about lossless above 16-bit, and choose Tidal if you're an audiophile who would notice the difference on a $2,000 amp. Watch for whether Spotify finally ships hi-res and Atmos in 2026 — until then, the algorithm is still doing most of the heavy lifting.