Many Spotify users have been eagerly waiting for the company to reveal their HiRes policy and pricing. I can understand that Apple ‘caught them off guard’ by offering HiRes at no additional charge (still €10/mo). But charging customers twice this amount for HiRes (and some irrelevant stuff) would be totally unjustfiable in the current music streaming arena. I can imagine that many users will reconsider their subscription and go for a more realistic offer, like Apple or Qobuz. Follow the market, Spotify!
Doubt whether Spotify is reading here, wrong audience 
Well, they should. 
I remember that there was interview with Michelangelo in audiophile style: Audiophile Style Podcast: Episode 24 | Volumio Interview - Podcast - Audiophile Style
They discussed topics such as intellectual property and music services. Now, I use my Volumio device only to listen stereo audio from my USB hard drive and occasionally some web radios. These two things are done with MPD. On Asus Tinker Board mentioned things work flawlessly for me and MPD itself is open source software.
Now if users want integration of non open-source services, then they must expect to pay for integration. Why? API-s for such non open-source services may not be public and freely accessible for software developers. Companies just protect their intellectual property. For software developers it means some strict license agreements and closed source blobs. This again mean that Volumio dev team must write their own closed-source blobs for Volumio, but also maintain them in-house. Remember such kind of blobs code can’t be published and maintained by community like most Volumio components. People fail to understand that such kind of things like MQA, Dolby Atmos, Streaming services can’t be officially done without license agreements between Volumio and service/license providing companies.
Personally I use free version of Volumio because free features are enough for me as mentioned before. I personally think that Volumio dev team has made great job on basic audiophile features. Remember Volumio’s base system and older UI’s are open-source and can be modified by everyone! Sadly Manifest UI is probably closed-source.
Of course, free is great. But someone has to produce it…
I don’t understand the unwanted complaints about the free mentality.
When you consider what kind of bullshit a lot of money is spent on, and here for great work the little money is said to be too expensive. I don’t think the complaint is correct.
For me, Volumio is a fantastic thing and of course I’m a premium customer! - Thank you Volumio!
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Seems people have no clue about the amount of time and effort that goes in writing/debugging code.
That you can loose 2/3 hours on a single line with 60 characters.
Volumio provides a full free player for local files and charge a small fee, for additional (streaming) services. Which on top are painfully to maintain, as those streaming services like to make changes now and then, which they need to solve, for us paying customers., without the possibility charge us additional for it.
So Every sold license gives them 2 or 3 hours to code/develop, keep their server park running for a few hours or gives them funding to create great stuff like the Primo/Rivo/Integro.
So see the small amount for the license, as a small fee to keep surprising us.
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I think most users don’t realise what server park is needed for their (even freebee, think of updates) volumio system to work, and that not only in their own, but also in many other geographical locations.
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Some people also don’t realize the “Hi-fi community” who make use of all these wonderful things aren’t exactly a massive group, so making piles of cash is not what’s happening. It surprises me that Volumio Premium is as cheap as it is.
Not being a Spotify user myself it seems quite expensive these days.
Definitely wouldn’t consider it anyway since Hi-Fi isn’t happening for the foreseeable future.
From my POV, Online Hi-Fi (High-Res) audio no usable.
I want to provide my personal opinion.
Now Spotify used for review new music, listen in enough quality some products of music industry to check them and see how it sounds.
In case I find some likely music release I’m going to buy it.
Example: I have bought WAW release for download from Mozart Heroes.
And I’m listening music from Volumio.
Spotify good for my Car apple connect to listen music on the road. But in car I’m not need to use high res and current quality is more than enough.
Why I’m doing this? Because I’m not listening popular and known music. I have to listen only what I like, but no once I have found my music was removed from Spotify, or I can’t found track from Youtube on Spotify service.
Spotify family pack is not so expensive and could be used, but I think I will stop using it sometimes.
Because pay for the similar music each month, price that I could use to pay for endless music listening it’s not really good.
This practice is good for always changed services, like Photoshop for professional usage, when update really used.
But now Spotify updates for me is totally unusable, new releases isn’t interesting at all.
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