- Spotify could be releasing a ‘Bulk Downloads’ feature
- This means you won’t have to delete and redownload your music to upgrade to offline lossless streaming
- The platform could also be bringing playback speed tools to music
Over the last few weeks Spotify has spoiled us with a number of new tools, and it shows no signs if slowing down any time soon, with two more new features apparently in the pipeline.
In Android Authority’s latest deep dive into the Spotify app, the outlet came across a line of code referring to a ‘Bulk Download’ feature, an upgrade users have wanted for a while, and which could fix a small, yet frustrating problem for many.
As it stands, Spotify allows you to download music for offline playback at five different audio-quality settings; low, normal, high, very high, and lossless. But when the platform unveiled lossless back in September 2025, users noticed that switching your offline download quality to lossless would only apply that change to future downloads, and wouldn’t automatically upgrade your existing ones, even though Spotify automatically does this for non-lossless tiers.
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This can be quite a tedious task, especially if you have a rather large library of downloaded music, as you have to remove content from your downloads and then redownload them one by one to upgrade to offline lossless listening.
So the addition of Bulk Downloads would be a welcome improvement, removing this hassle for Premium subscribers who want offline lossless streaming across all the music in their downloads library.
Android Authority also spotted code strings referring to warning notifications for data usage and storage space — and a popular podcast feature that could be on the way for music playback.
Is playback speed for music on the way?
Spotify already lets you change the playback speed for podcasts, and in another teardown Android Authority found code suggesting that you’ll soon be able to change music playback speed too.
At the moment there aren’t any further details that suggest when it will arrive, or what speed options it will offer. With podcast playback speeds, you can choose from a range between 0.5x to 3.5x, so we might get the same options for music — but whether it’s a feature users will actually want is another question.
I’ve often made use of the playback-speed feature while listening to podcasts when traveling, speeding up playback when conversations are too slow, so that I can get through an episode quicker.
But what benefit does this bring to music playback? I know it’s become a popular practice for artists to release sped-up and reverbed versions of their songs that go viral, but even then, those versions are no match for the original recordings. As a passionate album-listener I couldn’t think of a less satisfying way of listening to a body of work, or a single track for that matter.
Perhaps there are some people who might want to get through an album faster, rather than just enjoying it at its original length, but I just can’t see it. If Spotify does in fact introduce such a feature, it’ll be interesting to see how the streaming giant tries to pitch it to users.
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rowan.davies@futurenet.com (Rowan Davies)
