“On Spotify, artists from Latin trap, South African house, or even classical find more than 80% of their streams outside of their home country,” Ostroff said.

While the company may have a new focus compared to where it began 15 years ago as a pure music service, Spotify started the event highlighting how its algorithms have helped promote artists outside of their home markets and push users to discover new artists. Spotify spent nearly an equal amount of time on music and podcasting during the event, a signal of how it sees the company moving forward. “We’re committed to building the world’s leading audio platform,” Dawn Ostroff said before announcing a slew of new podcasts.

Spotify will become the biggest streaming service to announce a high-fidelity tier, following Amazon Music HD’s rollout in September 2019. Outside of Amazon, high-fidelity streaming audio has been limited to smaller platforms like Qobuz, Tidal, and Deezer. Spotify has not released additional details around the audio quality of its HiFi offering, or how much it will cost.

Spotify Announces Global Expansion of 80 New Markets

Spotify high fidelity